Out in the Silence

MPAA (Not Rated) Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 stars)

IMDb listing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1564058/
Official Website


Out in the Silence (directed by Dean Hammer and Joe Wilson) played recently at the 9th Annual Chicago Human Rights Watch Film Festival at Facet’s Multimedia in Chicago.  It is about documentary film-maker Joe Wilson coming back to his hometown of Oil City, Pennsylvania to document the case of a teenager C.J. Mills who had been so harassed at his high school for coming out as gay that he was forced to leave it in favor of being schooled at home.  Joe Wilson, who had grown up quietly gay in the town before leaving it as soon as he left for college, had come to hear of C.J.’s case from C.J.’s mother who wrote him after Joe Wilson had put an announcement in Oil City’s local paper following his recent (gay) marriage to Dean Hammer with whom he lived happily for years in Washington D.C. 

C.J.’s story presented in a very gentle way in this film will nonetheless certainly cause a veritable spectrum of immediate reactions in a whole host of people hearing/reading about the film.  I would note here simply that while the Catholic Church, obviously, does not support gay marriage and considers homosexuality to be an intrinsically disordered condition, it nevertheless opposes mistreatment and _most_ discrimination against homosexuals.  Whether or not this position is ultimately tenable is definitely not for me or anyone else to necessarily argue here.  However, my point is that the Catholic Church, while honestly having doctrinal issues over morality of gay sex (or any sex that isn’t open to the possibility to creating life) and therefore opposes gay marriage and finally gay adoption (yes, one position links to the next and down this three rung chain), it nevertheless _also_ recoils (I believe) with _sincere_ revulsion at the thought of violence perpetrated against gays.  Ah, if the writers of the Book of Leviticus only knew of penguins...

Having personally dealt with pastoral situations in which practicing Catholic families had to deal with children coming out as gay – and I am truly happy and I do believe even the whole Catholic Church similarly rejoices that the VAST MAJORITY of Catholic parents (and ALL of them, 100%, that I’ve _ever known_ or worked with in this situation) come to ACCEPT THEIR GAY CHILDREN -- I don’t think it is a bad thing for Catholics to see a movie like this, because this movie deals with real life.

All of us believe what we do (and largely as a result of our origins and upbringing) and the vast majority of us wish to be as good as we can be.  But I think ALL of us are also sickened at the thought of a 16 year old being beaten-up for ANY reason, be they that he/she was black, Jewish, Arab, or gay.  All of us instinctively understand (and again THE CATHOLIC CHURCH UNDERSTANDS) that there’s something deeply wrong with that.

As such, no matter what one may think/believe regarding homosexuality in a doctrinal/theoretical sense, this movie's worth seeing because most of us probably want our kids / young people to be happy and certainly no one wants to see 16 year olds being terrorized or beaten-up.


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Tree of Life [2011]

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv064.htm
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110602/REVIEWS/110609998

Tree of Life (written and directed by Terrence Malick) is a movie that has certainly created a buzz among film critics.  Very long, explicitly religious and rather strange, it has been suggested as being something a “mainstream”/“liberal” “answer” to Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ.  I’m not sure if that description is either particularly correct or particularly useful because I’m not sure if “liberal”/”conservative” are particularly useful terms in talking of a God who _one hopes_ is BIGGER than the _faddish_ peculiarities of American political discourse. 

It would seem to me that the buzz created by this movie is indicative of a legitimate thirst in the artistic/better educated communities for God Talk that goes beyond tendencious slogans like “God hates government sponsored health insurance.” 

That this movie stands _so alone_ -- I’d compare the movie _more_ to Martin Scorcese’s Last Temptation of Christ than to Gibson's Passion of the Christ – only underlines the God Talk "Desert" that we find ourselves in.  And here it must be said that Church leaders both Catholic and Protestant are as much responsible as anybody for sucking water out of religious discourse in contemporary American film. 

In the name of everyone who’s ever actually read Nikos Kazantzakis' book The Last Temptation of Christ or seen Scorcese’s movie, I’d like to declare the obvious: the “last temptation” _wasn’t_ any kind of “sexual experience with Mary Magdalene.” Instead, the Temptation coming between Jesus’ words ON THE CROSS of “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46) and “Into your hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:46)  was TO GET OFF THE CROSS (after all, HE WAS GOD, HE COULD HAVE DONE THAT) and lead a normal, simple, happy life. 

The book Last Temptation of Christ and the movie that it inspired were _great_ (and _fun_) explorations of possible back-stories to the Gospel texts that we have, that _could_ give joy/spiritual nourishment to _anyone_ who’s ever really enjoyed “chewing” on God’s Word, that is Scripture.  Instead, both the book and especially the movie were condemned.  The result has been a near 20 year creative drought.  Afterall, why would a mainstream director _want_ the career risking hassle of putting out an overtly religious work?  So the ONLY overtly religious explorations in American film produced in the last 20 years were occasional SAFELY CONSERVATIVE productions.  Even then the producers of _these productions_ were shelled, if not by the religious community then by America’s creative community, as Mel Gibson and Roland Joffé (director of the recent movie There be Dragons) could attest. 

So whatever else one could say about the Tree of Life, at least it offers the possibility of breaking this generational drought in religious exploration in American film.  And I’d like to take this opportunity to tee-up and aim for a home run here: I’d like to challenge the film community to take this film as a starting point, and take _also_ the artistic insights of the likes of Salvador Dali (a not-insignificant portion of whose work had an obvious religious dimension [1],[2],[3]) and James Joyce [1] [2] (to some extent the latter has been used in movies like the Coen brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? and more recently A Serious Man) and go out to produce a new generation of religiously grounded films. 

I can think of at least three religiously based films that are crying to be made:

A film based on the life of the biblical Jacob, who went through most of his life as arguably _a con man_ but one, as one reads his story, who _didn’t have_ much of a choice.  Yet _this_ was the one whom God eventually blessed with a new name, Israel, that is “one who wrestles with God.”  

A film based on the life of the Joseph of Genesis, who had every right to just hang himself in prison after having been betrayed once by his Brothers and again by the wife of his Master/Boss.  And yet, there in the Darkness of the Dungeon that he found himself in, with arguably ONLY his Dreams as his company, he was able to slowly rebuild his life and then to the extent that he actually ended up Saving the Brothers who betrayed him in the first place.  Reading that take on Joseph’s life, it actually starts to look NOT ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT from that of the young teenage girl who after the death of her mother was “sent into an insane asylum” by her step-father which formed the foundation of the story-line for Zack Snyder's recent movie Suckerpunch that was roundly panned by critics, though interestingly not necessarily by the Church.

Finally, a film based on the life of Saint Patrick, the rich Christian boy (Patricius was probably derived from Patrician, meaning upper class in Latin) from Britain who was kidnapped by still pagan Irish raiders (perhaps in hopes of extorting a ransom), who after his escape _decades later_ had _every reason to be bitter_ and to _hate_ those Irish raiders for stealing what would have been the “best” (young adult) years of his life.  Instead, he _chose_ to make lemonade out of the lemons that he was given, became ordained as a priest after he escaped and found his way back to Britain, AND RETURNED to Ireland to convert the very people who had so thoroughly damaged his life. 

There are countless other stories that one can think of once one starts going and I mention these three in part because one wonders what the creative community of today could achieve with them if the free-form techniques used by Terrence Malick to make the Tree of Life (based on the Book of Job) were applied to them.
 
Okay now, to the actual movie ... Malick’s Tree of Life begins with a quotation from the Job: “Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its size; do you know? Who stretched out the measuring line for it?  Into what were its pedestals sunk, and who laid the cornerstone, While the morning stars sang in chorus and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4-7). 

The beginning sequence of the movie featured two people, a woman in the 1950s, Mrs O’Brien (played by Jessica Chastain) and a man, Jack (played by Sean Penn), a generation later calling out to God about the difficulties in life that they were facing.  The visual response was slow, awesome and long.  About 5-6 minutes were devoted to the age of the dinosaurs alone..., who we are eventually reminded (again visually) were destroyed in more or less an instant by a meteor strike. 

That sequence ends with Jack calling out to God “when did you speak to me first,” which begins heart of the movie.  Presented initially are mostly images of Jack’s birth and early experiences, playing with his mother, playing with blocks, playing with mud, playing eventually with a new younger brother and encountering also his father Mr. O’Brien (played by Brad Pitt).  Much happens afterwards.  The movie closes _without_ it being altogether clear what exactly were the crises that Mrs O’Brien faced or her son faced a generation later.  But most viewers will probably get the point.

The Tree of Life is an _awesome_ movie in the proper sense of the word.  It won’t necessarily be for everyone.  Indeed, I can’t think of _anyone_ that I would immediately recommend this movie to in my mostly “meat and potatoes” ethnic parish, though after to some reflection I would recommend it to some and perhaps to some of their adult children.  But I do believe the movie to be brave and it could become the inspiration of a lot of brave and reflective film-making in the future.   Thanks Malick for making it!


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The Green Wave

MPAA (Not Rated) Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1667130/
Official Website -
http://www.thegreenwave-film.com/

The Green Wave (directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi and co-written again by Ali Samadi Ahadi as well as Oliver Stoltz) is a well produced film about the nationwide protest movement born in Iran during the 2009 election.  The movie is one of the selections currently playing at Chicago’s 9th Annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival being held at Facet’s Multimedia in Chicago.

Having witnessed the revolutions of the Arab Spring this year in Tunisia and Egypt as well as continued protests and conflicts in Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen, the Green Protests in Iran in 2009 may seem like ancient history to us today.  Yet, it was the young people in Iran who first converted social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube into platforms for organizing their opposition, “Green” movement, which were used so extensively in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere throughout the Middle East to do the same this year.

The Green Wave weaves interviews with opposition figures including Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and Shadi Sadr as well as younger leaders, often in exile, including Mitra Khalatbari, Payam Akhavan, Navid Akhavan and Pegah Ferydoni with poignant animations of testimonies posted by Iranian young people on blogs and twitter feeds during the height of the protests and subsequent crackdown in which far more people were killed on the streets, and subsequently arrested, tortured and killed in prison than most people outside of Iran are aware. 

There is the reason for why the 2009 Green Revolution in Iran did not succeed, the people were terrorized back into submission. 

Still the cracks in the regime appear to be there.  In a particularly poignant testimony, a member of Iran’s religious police confessed to having blood on his hands, having participated in the beating deaths of three young boys during the crackdown on the protests.  Disturbed, he along with others in his squad asked their mullah chaplain what they should do to get forgiveness.  The mullah chaplain assured them that they killed only infidels who had it coming to them.  Yet, this member of the religious police confessed that since the killings he’s stopped praying convinced that he had done wrong and that Allah knew ... Similar stories trickled out of Argentina during and after its “Dirty War” with the Communists in the 1970s (LA Times, Mar 8, 1995).  Good, fundamentally honest even patriotic people can’t be convinced to kill the innocent forever to keep a regime in power.  And the next Presidential elections in Iran are only 2 years away in 2013 ...


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X-Men: First Class [2011]

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1270798/
CNS/USCCB review -
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110602/REVIEWS/110609997

X-Men: First Class (directed by Matthew Vaughn, screenplay co-written by Ashley Miller and Zach Stentz and others) is based on the X-Men comic series by Marvel Comics.

Set initially during World War II and then principally during the period immediately leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, this movie is a “prequel” to the X-Men series, focusing on the origins of the X-men comics’ principal adversaries: (Professor) Charles Xavier (played by James McAvoy, young Charles played by Lawrence Belcher) and Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto (played by Michael Fassbender, young Erik played by Bill Milner). 

Born into privilege though with a tragic home life in Westchester, New York, Charles Xavier was a young boy during World War II.  Erik Lehnsherr (Max Eisenhardt in the original comic) was born Jewish in Nazi Germany.  Sent to Auschwitz during the Holocaust, Erik watched his family (in the original series) or his mother (in this movie) murdered before his eyes by the Nazis. 

Both discovered early that they had “special powers,” Xavier that he could communicate with people telepathically, Erik that he could move and bend iron. 

Initially neither knew of anyone else with similar powers.  By chance one evening (and perhaps because his childhood was less traumatic than Erik’s) the young Xavier encounters a young girl named Raven, later calling herself Mystique (played by Jennifer Lawrence, young Raven played by Morgan Lily), who had shape-shifted into looking like Xavier’s mother.  Since Raven was acting much too nicely to be his mother, Xavier realizes that something is awry, and when Raven shape-shifts back to her blue skinned, young girl self, both Xavier and Raven discover that “they’re not alone.” He realizes that these special powers derive from some kind of genetic mutation.  Xavier then decides to make the study of genetic mutation and its effect on human evolution his life’s work. 

In contrast, Erik does not discover anyone else with special powers until he’s an adult.  In fact, he’s not particularly interested in finding out if there were any others like him.  Instead, he remains understandably consumed with avenging the deaths of his family, especially of his mother by the Nazi doctor, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker in the original series, Sebastian Strucker (played by Kevin Bacon) in the movie.  Strucker took interest in him and wanted to harness Erik’s power, which he discovered was set off by anger.  (Hence, why Strucker had Erik’s mother brought into the lab and shot in front of him, in order to set Erik off ...).

After the war like many Nazis, the evil doctor Strucker fled Europe.  More than a decade later now an adult but still _very angry_, Erik follows Strucker's trail down to Argentina where he discovers that Dr. Strucker had changed his name to Sebastian Shaw and had become a nefarious international arms merchant working out of Miami, Florida dealing with both the Americans and the Soviets and playing them off against each other.  Erik decides to head to Miami to “take care” of him there.

But there’s more to Shaw/Dr Strucker as well.  It turns out that he’s a mutant too.  That is what US intelligence agent Moira MacTaggert (played by Rose Byrne) discovers.  To better understand what the U.S./world is up against in regards to the "mutant" Shaw and his allies, she looks up "an expert," Charles Xavier... 

This then sets up the rest of the story.  Xavier now knows that there are at least three mutants in the world: himself, Raven and Shaw.  He does not know of Erik yet.  Along with Moira and her agency, he quickly sets out to look for more.  There is little time to waste as Shaw is bent on playing the Americans and Soviets against each other in the events that lead up to what the world remembers today as the Cuban Missile Crisis.  (History of course, don't remember any "mutants" involved, but Marvel Comics, here "sets us straight" ;-).

The rest of the movie is about the three key mutants – Xavier, Erik/Magneto and Strucker/Shaw – playing out their approaches to dealing with “being a mutant," that is, being Different, a radical "Other:" 

Strucker/Shaw _wants_ the Americans and Russians to blow themselves up, to destroy humanity and create _more mutants_.  Xavier believes that humans and mutants _can work together_ especially if humans better appreciated what mutants could do for the world.  Erik/Magneto, already literally marked by a tatoo for his radical Otherhood (being Jewish) in The Holocaust, hates Strucker/Shaw and wants to kill him to avenge the death of his mother.  But he does not believe that humanity would ever accept “mutants” as good.

Other mutants including Angel (played by Zoe Kravatz), Hank/Beast (played by Nicholas Hoult),  Alex Summers/Havoc (played by Lucas Till), and Raven/Mistique struggle in different ways with their Otherness and choose sides brewing the conflict.

It all makes for another rather compelling morality tale presented in Marvel Comics' "trademark" style/language to adolescents: How do we look at our “Otherness” or the “Otherness” of those around us?  Can we see it as potential Gift to the Community, the larger Whole?  Or do we see “Otherness” something to be feared, put-down, hidden, eliminated? 

And yes, there’s a religious question in all this which pertains with a particular importance to the Catholic Church: What could/should the role/place of "the Other" be in our faith, which after all is to be: "One, Holy Catholic (Universal) and Apostolic?

Finally, this isn't the first X-men movie to come out based on the Comic.  There have been four others X-Men (2000), X2 (2003), X-Men Last Stand (2006), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), of varying suitability to younger viewers.  Most, while somewhat confusing to follow, were fine.  The last, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was however criticized for being too graphic in its violence and, well, showed a bit more physically of one of the male mutants than was really necessary ...

This new movie, X-Men: First Class, returns to the realm of legitimate PG-13 fare and in terms of plot clarity is probably the clearest of the series thus far.  All in all the movie's not great but still pretty good.  Marvel's made better, but it's also made worse.  Perhaps the story's just too complicated, with too many nuanced characters for a comic book / series.


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Midnight in Paris [2011]

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB () Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars) Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review

Midnight in Paris (written and directed by Woody Allen) is a fun film that probably would be enjoyed by anyone who’s ever dreamed of living in another “golden" era.

Gil (played by Owen Wilson) is a successful but unhappy Hollywood screen-writer who's long felt that he "sold out" and would much prefer trading-in his celluloid success for some serious writing.  He finds himself on vacation in Paris with his fiancé Inez (played by Rachel McAdams) where they meet-up with her parents, John (played by Kurt Fuller) and Helen (played by Mimi Kennedy).  Future father-in-law John had come Paris on a business trip to sell "the Frogs" some stuff, but it's obvious that John hates the place.  Gil, instead, falls in love with Paris, even its rain, while the rest, including his fiancé just want get their business done, buy stuff and go back to the States.  Worse, Gil and Inez run into a couple of Inez’ friends, Paul (played by Micahel Sheen) and Carol (played by Nina Arianda).  Paul, like similar characters in other Woody Allen films, is extremely knowledgeable (to the point of arguing with a tourguide (played by Italian actress and current French first lady Carla Bruni), but (1) can’t shut up and (2) after all his fact spewing is taken away, just doesn’t “get” where he is, PARIS, and certainly doesn’t appreciate it the way Gil does.

So after a particularly awful wine-tasting party where Inez’ dad declares that anything from California’s Sonoma Valley is better the pretentious French swill that they were being served (and Paul disagees only in the details), Gil decides to “take a walk” rather than join the rest who want to go out dancing (To what? no doubt bad Anglophone music...).

Walking about, Gil finds himself at a random fountain on a random street corner in Paris when at the stroke of midnight, a 1920s-era Peugeot pulls up.  A woman holding a teetering champagne glass, dressed in 1920s flapper garb opens the window and calls him over.  She and her well-groomed partner invite him in to join them.  Inside the car, they pour him a glass and introduce themselves as Scott Fitzgerald (played by Tom Hiddleston) and Zelda (played by Alison Pill).  Gil does not believe them.  It's only when they come to the pub / dance hall that they were going to and introduce him to Ernest Hemingway (played by Corey Stoll), _that_ Gil spits out his drink.  The characters around Gil are _exactly_ like they were portrayed in the various biographies about them.  Zelda is spacy, F. Scott Fitzgerald is a gentleman, Ernest Hemingway can’t get way from leading every conversation back to bravery and honor...

Gil spends sometime talking to Hemingway about the novel he’s been trying to write, gets Hemingway to promise to take a look at it.  Sometime afterwards, Gil decides that he really ought to go home, says his goodbyes, steps out of the bar, turns the corner then realizes that he didn’t set where he was supposed to meet Hemingway to show him his unfinished novel.  Returning to the bar, he finds that the bar had turned back into an all-night laundromat.  Still, what a night!

The next evening, Gil makes an excuse to take a late night walk again, and heads, manuscript in hand, to the same fountain on the same street corner and is met at the stroke of midnight by the same Peugeot.  This time, Hemingway’s in the Peugeot.  Gil hands him the manuscript.  Hemingway turns it down saying, “Don’t ever give another writer your manuscript.  If it’s terrible, he’ll hate it.  And if it’s good, he’ll hate it even more. I’ve got someone better for you to show your manuscript to...” And so they head over to Gertrude Stein’s (played by Cathy Bates).  When they come over to her flat, she’s busy arguing with Pablo Picasso (played by Marcial di Fonzo Bo) over a painting he was making of an altogether unassuming model named Adriana (played by Marion Cotillard). 

I mention all this because Gil then hits it off with Adriana and much of the rest of the movie is about Gil balancing two relationships in two different eras until it all eventually gets resolved.  In the meantime on his midnight adventures, Gil gets to meet all sorts of other famous personalities of Paris in the 1920s including Josaphine Baker (played by Sonia Rolland), T.S. Elliot (played by David Lowe), and Salvador Dali (played by Adrien Brody).  Indeed, one of the funniest scenes in the movie involves Gil explaining his apparent time-traveling journey to Salvador Dali and two other Surrealists, Man Ray (played by Tom Cordier) and Luis Buñuel (played by Adrien de Van).  Man Ray responds “I see a picture,” Buñuel “I see a film.”  Dali, “I see a rhinoceros.” LOL ;-)

Adriana, however, is not happy in the "Paris of the Lost Generation" (the 1920s).   She dreams of “Paris of the Belle Époque” (the 1890s).  And lo and behold, one evening as Gil and Adriana are sitting ourdoors at a random café on a random street in Paris of the 1920s, a horse and carriage roll up and call to Adriana to come in.  Gil and Adriana take the invitation and soon find themselves taken by the couple inside to a "salón" of the times.  Soon they make their way to the Moulin Rouge where they meet Toulouse Lautrec (played by Vincent Menjou Cortes) and soon meet Paul Gaugin (played by Olivier Rabourdin) and Edgar Degas (François Rostain), who they find dream of “what it must have been like to live in the Renaissance.”

The movie resolves itself in typical, gentle but funny Woody Allen fashion (and yes there is a point to the tale).  Most importantly, one is left with a 100 minute masterpiece that will tickle the heart of any arts, literature and/or history student and will offer a “cliffnotes” video-stroll to _any_ high school kid struggling with a term paper about the writers and artists presented in this film.

I’ve been a Woody Allen fan since my college days.  I’ve long explained to friends that Allen’s movies (especially in recent years) are a “hit or miss” affair with about ½ “hitting” and the other half, well ... In this case however, I believe that he hit a bulls-eye.  Indeed, as amazing as Woody Allen's career has been, I do believe that this film is _certainly_ one of his best.  And it may well be that in the future it'll be said that Midnight in Paris was the capstone of his career.  I'll still be going to Allen's films as they come out, but it's hard for me to imagine that he'll do any better this one.  Congrats!


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Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (A-II) Roger Ebert (2 stars) Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1298650/
CNS/USCCB Review -
http://www.usccb.org/movies/p/pirates2011.shtml
Roger Ebert's Review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110518/REVIEWS/110519968

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (directed by Rob Marshall, co-written by Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, et al) is the fourth in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, which was famously born of a popular Disney theme-park attraction.  As such, part of the attraction of these films always been wondering if their creators could “pull it off” or with each sequel continue to do so.   Like many others, I personally believe that the first Pirates of the Caribbean (The Curse for the Black Pearl) movie was a wonder and the subsequent ones, less so.  I don’t believe that On Stranger Tides was the worst of the four movies in this series.  That dubious honor I believe goes to the the third movie At World’s End.  The second movie, Dead Man’s Chest, was okay as I believe was On Stranger Tides. 

My single biggest criticism of the series since the original, Curse for the Black Pearl, has been _terrible_ editing.  The creators of this series could learn a bit or two from the Silvester Stalone Rocky series, which also extended an initially unlikely but then enormously successful original movie into a series with five sequels.  The stories were often very thin and predictable, but the editing was often the best in the business keeping the films on pace and every scene in them having a clear purpose.   In contrast, the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels had often circled and meandered seemingly forever (I believe the worst in this regard was the third film, At World’s End, where I honestly was wishing “would they _just get there_” already). 

Additionally, the ligthing in this movies has often been very dark.  I do realize that half the day is night, often there is fog on the sea, and often the most action on the sea happens during storms but I’ve found the persistent dark lighting most of these films, especially in the sequels to be very burdensome.  And anecdotally I can report that not a negligible amount of viewers end up falling asleep during parts of these films.

More positively, I do believe that the films’ creators have mined well the “lore of the seas” for their stories – ghost ships, sea monsters, voodoo priestesses, cannibal tribes (in previous episodes) as well as mermaids and the search for “the fountain of youth” in this one.  I just wish the stories could be told with better lighting and with tighter scripts ;-).

In this episode then of the series, On Stranger Tides, Jack Sparrow (played by Johnny Depp) finds himself back in England about to be tried (and hanged) for piracy while a rival Barbossa (played by Geoffrey Rush) holds a piece of paper declaring himself “legit” as a “Privateer for the Crown” rather than a pirate anymore :-).  Yes, that was true!  England did hire private captains in those years to attack Spanish shipping on behalf of the English crown and the main difference between such “privateers” and pirates was simply that they had a “piece of paper” (a contract) allowing them to do so and that they limited the targets of their raiding to enemies of the English crown (ie left English shipping alone...).

Anyway, as always, Jack Sparrow finds a way to weasel out of his legal predicament and soon both he and Barbossa find themselves on quest – for the Fountain of Youth – that they discovered that the Spanish (archenemies of the English at the time) were on.  Barbossa actually appears mostly after Blackbeard (played by Ian Shane) who he finds is on this quest already.  Jack Sparrow initially all that interested as meeting-up with Blackbeard would be awkward for him as he seemed to have had an earlier fling with his ½ Spanish daughter Angelica Malon (played by Penelope Cruz), worse just days before she was going to take her vows to enter the convent. 

Much ensues.  Many of the characters from the previous Pirates of the Caribbean movies are not present in this film, notably Elizabeth Swann (played by Keira Knightly) and Will Turner (played by Orlando Bloom).  However, I do believe that addition of Penelope Cruz’ Angelica was not a bad one.  Then there was also the mermaid Syrena (played by Astrid Berges-Frisbey) as well as a young hunky English protestant missionary Philip (played by Sam Claflin).

Regarding the PG-13 rating.  I think that the movie’s rating was appropriate to probably a little overly conservative.  Yes, the mermaid was topless, but she’s _always_ discreetly covered.   Compare this to other recent PG-13 fare like Suckerpunch (set in a brothel/insane asylum where all the female protagonists dressed in provocative/slutty costuming throughout) and Limitless (which glorified the use of performance enhancing drugs even to the point of graphically portrayed addiction to them).  In comparison, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides runs like a somewhat dark/rainy Little House on the Prairie episode.

All in all, the elements for yet another good story are present in On Stranger Tides and I do believe it basically works.  I just wish that lighting was brighter and the script had been tighter and we could have gotten out of the theater in 2 hours rather than, with the inevitable 20 minutes of advertisements for upcoming attractions, nearly three.


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Kung Fu Panda 2 [2011]

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1302011/
CNS/USCCB review -
Roger Ebert review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110524/REVIEWS/110529984

Kung Fu Panda 2 [2015] (directed by Jennifer Yuh, cowritten by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger) is a well-written, well-animated (3D once again IMHO utterly unnecessary), well-voiced sequel to the first Kung Fu Panda movie written, directed, voiced and animated by the same team.

There’s a lovely gentle humor running through these young kid, family-oriented movies.  My favorite character remains Panda Po’s (voice by Jack Black) more or less obviously adoptive father, the noodle shop running Goose named Mr Ping (voice by James Hong).  That almost certainly Mr Ping could not possibly have been Panda Po’s actual father was a running gag through the first movie (even though it was obvious that Mr Ping cared deeply for his much larger, far furrier and certainly far larger/fatter son, and that Po never knew anyone else other than Mr Ping and presumably Mr Ping’s long deceased wife, as his parents).   Note simply that there are a lot of Chinese children that have been adopted over the years by American couples and that most of the time, they don't look much at all like each other (kinda like Po and Mr Ping) even if they certainly love one another (again much like the two in the Kung Fu Panda stories).  Panda Po’s origins and who Mr Ping came to take care of him is developed/explained nicely in this, the sequel.

Then there are the lovely paradoxes so much part of traditional East Asian spirituality (and which are actually part and parcel of _most_ spiritual/religious traditions even Christianity).  These include that the fabled “Dragon Warrior” master “destined to save Kung Fu” would turn out to be an overweight panda named Po, when so many _seemingly_ worthier candidates could be found, frustrating Shifu the Red Panda master (voice by Dustin Hoffman) who had to train Po, as well as some of Po's initial rivals including the Tigress (voice by Angelina Jolie), Mantis (voice by Seth Rogan), Viper (voice by Lucy Liu) and Crane (voice by David Cross) This made-up much of the story in the first Kung Fu Panda movie.

In this movie, a rich, spoiled, young peacock, Lord Shen (voice by Gary Altman) who had everything, but wanted more, and turned a substance (gunpowder) which previously brought joy (fireworks) into a weapon (a dragon headed cannon) is warned by a soothsayer water-buffalo (voice by Michelle Yeoh) that he will be defeated by a “great warrior” who is “black and white’ (Panda Po) who had obviously lost his parents somehow and had been raised by a kind, well meaning, goose (Mr Ping). 

There is much for young children and their families to learn as this story plays out, and if the story is expressed in an East Asian narrative form, (1) the lessons are easily translatable into Christian language as well “the last shall be first and the first shall be last" (Mt 20:16) and (2) the story is a reminder of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate that “the Catholic Church does not reject anything that is true or holy in these other [South and East Asian] religions” (NA#2). 

This statement of the Second Vatican Council may not be altogether appreciated by Christians and Catholics of European or Latin American ancestry, but is of enormous importance to South and East Asian Christians and Catholics from nations like Korea, Vietnam (with large Christian and Catholic populations), China, Japan and India (with smaller but often very ancient Christian and Catholic populations) and even the Philippines (overwhelmingly Catholic but with a culture and sensibility that is still profoundly East Asian) where the need to integrate one's faith with one's cultural origins is a matter of day-to-day life and necessary for maintaining an internal peace/equillibrium. 

A point is also made in this sequel that no matter how difficult or sad one’s previous life may have been one has the choice of responding positively toward the future.  This too carries a Christian equivalent where Jesus told his disciples "do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gahenna" (Mt 10:28).  Again, no matter what our past may have been, we always have a choice of how to respond regarding the future.  We can choose to live in hurt, but we can choose to let go, or even and especially to forgive. 

Hence this story which is so beautifully expressed with an East Asian idiom has a message that is easily translatable into Catholic/Christian language as well and so I do hope that well meaning Catholic/Christian parents would not fear taking their kids to the film, because it is lovely (and probably because you're taking your kids to Tae Kwon Do or Karate classes anyway ;-). 

Finally, it remains interesting to me how so many spiritualities (in this case an Eastern one) talk of both searching for inner peace and yet also of external conflict and how often the interelationship between these two realities (the internal and the external) show up both in our ancient stories/Scriptures like the Book of Revelation or in the Islamic concept of Jihad and in more modern stories and films, perhaps most notably in the Jedi spirituality of the monks in Star Wars.  I’ve mentioned a number of times as I’ve reviewed a number of recent, more young-adult oriented “Apocalyptic” films like Suckerpunch or Priest.  Don't get me wrong, Kung Fu Panda 2 is a kids film while the other two are _certainly not_ (oriented to older teens and young adults).  Still the theme of external conflict being present even in the midst of the search for inner peace is present in all three.  And this theme may give adults something (a paradox, even a koan perhaps) to contemplate as they watch this film with their smiling, 3D glasses-wearing kids.  Happy viewing to all ;-)


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