Paranormal Activity 3

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1778304/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv131.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111019/REVIEWS/111029999

Paranormal Activity 3 (directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman and written by Christopher Landen and Oren Peli) continues the tightly written, suspenseful, increasingly dark and remarkably low-budget Paranormal Activity franchise.  But it's probably the last of the Paranormal Activity movies that I'm going to review on this blog. While I saw the first Paranormal Activity movie and was fascinated by its fantastically low production cost (less than $15,000 for the whole movie) and filming techniques,I only started this blog a year ago.  So I reviewed only Paranormal Activity 2 here.  That movie I continued to like, and I continue to be fascinated with the series' use of (fake) surveillance camera footage to tell a story and to build suspense.  In this regard, Oren Peli, creator of the first Paranormal Activity movie has proven to be a genius.

However, I do find the series getting increasingly dark and I just don't see where else (but get increasingly dark) that the series could go in the future.  Since I've tended to have a "healthy respect" for Evil, the Occult, etc, enough to try to keep a distance from it, I'm calling it quits with regard to this series at this point and would certainly recommend that parents (and young people) consider the same.  The CNS/USCCB also rates this film "L" or for limited viewing (even by adults) with significant reservations.

Expressing here my reservations with the direction of the series, I see the story in this series as building and we, the viewers, really don't know what the intentions and final goals of the producers of this series are or even if they know where they are taking this series.  One does get the sense that they are making it up as they go along.  That may absolve them of some guilt of consciously pursuing an increasingly dark agenda but it also can make them accessories to forces (in Hollywood, our subconscious or even beyond) that they themselves may not understand. 

Paranormal Activity 3 is presented as a prequel to the previous two films when the two sisters, Katie (played as an adult by Katie Featherston) who figures prominently in the first film and Kristi (played as an adult by Sprague Grayden) in the second, were children.  (It's actually quite fascinating how the makers of the film transport the series "use of surveillance cam video schtick" back to 1988 when such technology was not widely accessible to regular, middle class people like those in the story, but they do succeed).  In the first movie, we saw that Katie was tormented by some kind of a demon.  And we were told in that movie that she'd been tormented by this demon for most of her life.  In this the third movie, we're given something of an explanation of why. 

The explanation is actually quite cautionary in nature.  It becomes clear that there was at least one person (and conceivably more) in the lives of these children who was dabbling in the Occult.  So arguably the message becomes, "Don't dabble in the Occult."

But once one brings up "black magic," "the Occult," and all that, the question follows of how much attention or power does one wish to give it.  And I honestly think that it may be best to just say, "Okay, we now know that there were some fairly creepy people in the lives of these two girls when they were kids," and walk away.

There really is no need for a good Christian or a good Catholic to delve into this storyline further.  And when it comes to all this stuff, young Catholics ought to know how to pray their Rosary and certainly their Hail Mary's especially the part "Holy Mary mother of God, pray for us sinners _now_ and at the hour of our death," because there are things that we really don't understand and it's not bad to keep those (darker) things at a distance.


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Real Steel

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433035/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv123.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111005/REVIEWS/111009985

Real Steel (directed by Shawn Levy, screenplay by John Gatins, story by Dan Gilroy, based on the short story Steel by Richard Matheson) set in the future / not quite yet present and about animatronic boxing robots is a movie that on the surface seems like a potentially great "father and son" film.  For whoever has ever played a boxing video game would not be fascinated by the prospect that sometime in the near future one will be able use those video controls to control an actual 8 foot tall, titanium-steel, piston driven robotic boxer?

Yet, as one delves deeper, the film could actually be quite disturbing.  For the movie is about a man, Charlie Kenton (played by Hugh Jackman), presented to us as washed-up boxer (but more generally he could be any man) who never really grew up and seems to get away with it.  And I would imagine that a fair number of people, especially women, who've been disappointed over the years by men who seem to have never grown-up would find the film rather frustrating.

Charlie, said protagonist, had a promising career as a boxer almost becoming a real contender but he never quite broke through.  And it's clear that he made some real mistakes both when his career was on the rise and after it went into decline.

At the beginning of the film, we find him sleeping in his truck reduced to being a second rate promoter of robotic boxing literally on the “carnival circuit,” and owing serious money (tens of thousands of dollars a piece) to all kinds of people wanting to be repaid.  After losing another $20,000 on a stupid bet with a “county fair” rodeo operator that his remote controlled 8-foot biped animatronic boxing robot, that was clearly a garage creation (or at least had definitely seen better days) could beat-up or otherwise "robot handle" a 2000 pound bull, he tries to flee the scene.

While running toward his truck from those who he owes the 20-grand, he gets a phone call from a lawyer informing him that an ex-girlfriend of his had died.  One gets the sense that Charlie probably had a number of ex-girlfriends out there and of those anyone of them could have come to a sad end.  So why would this particular news about this particular ex-girlfriend matter to Charlie, speeding off in his truck with shards of his smashed robot in its hold?

Well, it turns out that he had a son, Max (played by Dakota Goyo) with this ex-girlfriend.  Again, it's possible that Charlie, low-life that he appeared to be, could have had other children with other ex-girlfriends out there.  Indeed, Charlie had never visited or supported Max up to this point.  However (single mothers abandoned by your former husbands/boyfriends do take note...) since his former girlfriend died without a will, Max stood to fall to Charlie's custody, a responsibility that Charlie would appear to have been neither interested in, nor capable of taking on.  So why not just ignore the phone call?  Well, the lawyer on the phone was of his ex-girlfriend’s sister Debra (played by Hope Davis) who wanted Charlie to drive over to Dallas to sign papers handing custody of Max to her.  Charlie, fleeing from people who wanted to hurt/kill him and who (it turns out) had some past connections with Dallas, decides to go there to both "do the right thing" and ... to "grasp at straws."

This turns out to be a remarkably good decision for Charlie (even if he arrived at in a remarkably random yet self-serving manner) because Debra had a rich boyfriend/fiance, Marvin (played by James Redhorn) who Charlie quickly ascertains would be willing to shell-out some serious cash -- $100,000 to be exact -- if Charlie sign-overed custody of Max to Debra.  Yes, he was right.  But alas, Marvin asks him for the favor, to “take care of Max” for the summer while he and Debra fly-out to Tuscany where he hoped to marry Debra before coming home.  Charlie happy to be getting some life-saving cash, agrees, while Max, 11, who’s never seen Charlie before (and pissed-off that Charlie keeps thinking he's 8-9) is not thrilled.  But he’s a kid, so he has to take it ...

Marvin pays Charlie $50K right away, promising the other $50K when he and Debra get back from Tuscany at the end of the summer.

So what does Charlie do with the $50K he just received?   Well he certainly doesn't use it to pay off any of his debts, including to the one to the rodeo goons who want to kill him.  Instead he blows $45K on another boxing robot, perhaps much better than the one that got trashed by the bull in the rodeo rink but still a seemingly reckless "investment."  He asks that this better robot (apparently a former champion robot from Japan) be delivered to the address the gym (also in Dallas) where he used to train.  The plot thickens ... 

That gym is now run by Bailey Tallet (played by Evangeline Lilly) the daughter of his former trainer.  She too has become something of an expert in robotic boxing though like her father acting more like a "trainer" interested in the optimization and maintenance of boxing robots than in actually animating them.  Charlie, a former boxer prefers, of course, to use the robots to box.  (The robots in this movie are still remote controlled, in much the same way as one would control a "boxer" in a video game).

It turns out that Charlie and Bailey have a history as well.  She too is deeply disappointed in what Charlie's become, but it's obvious that she's had a life-long crush on him.   She's also able to provide Max with some positive information about Charlie, who Max again has never known.  He had, indeed, been a talented boxer until age, injuries (and perhaps replacement by those robotic boxers... ) brought his career to an end.  Retooled, however, and using those animatronic robots to box, he still showed talent.  However it was clear that his decisions of how to use that talent were clearly flawed.

It would seem that Charlie had never really grown-up and perhaps because of limited intelligence was incapable of doing so.  It becomes up to Max and Bailey to actually help to get on the right path ...

And it isn't easy.  Charlie takes that new $45K Japanese robot and almost immediately trashes it in a match that even 11-year-old Max thought was a stupid risk.  "You didn't even really know how to control it yet?" a frustrated Max tells at him.

Yet, Charlie's "boyishness" isn't altogether a bad thing.  It's clear that Bailey still loves him perhaps indeed because by not growing-up (or having such difficulty doing so) he continues to remind her of what he used to be.  And his "boyishness" actually helps him, despite everything, to connect with his son, because how WAY COOL it would be to be with a dad who controls 8 foot, 2000 lb animatronic robots for a living!

So despite everything, one kinda hopes (or probably the men in the audience, kinda hope) for Charlie's redemption.  And redemption does appear to come, starting in truly dramatic fashion:

On the way home after trashing that $45K Japanese robot, at night, in the midst of a driving rainstorm, Charlie and Max go to a junk-yard to look for parts to fix him (and the other much cheaper robot that Charlie had trashed at the county fair).  In the midst of their garbage picking, Max comes across a discarded old "gen-2" robot (by the time of the film, the robots are of a "4th generation") that he's surprised he's able to start.  The two take the old school robot home.  And with that new (old) robot, the rest of the movie begins ...

The rest of the movie becomes something of a robotic remake of Rocky.  But it also becomes a story of a man, a boy and his WAY COOL 8 foot (pet) boxing robot.

It all makes for a nice movie for men and perhaps a plea for understanding.  But I would imagine that a lot of women would find the movie very frustrating because Charlie never really grows-up.  He changes, somewhat.  But the others around him change at least as much as him.

Still the movie does end well, coming from Hollywood after all.

But the movie does raise for me this set of questions: What if Charlie, a boxer after all, a boxer who had found himself replaced by robots (who even made peace with this professionally, "rolled with the punches," and became fairly good animator/controller of those "boxing robots") was really _unable_ to change to the degree that many of us would have liked?   What then?  In the movie, the people around Charlie change as well.   Is that enabling him?  Or is that showing him mercy? 


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The Big Year

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1053810/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv127.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111012/REVIEWS/111019997

The Big Year (directed by David Frankel, screenplay written by Howard Franklin based on the book The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik) is about competitive amateur "birding' (bird-watching to most of us).  I first heard of the story some years back watching an interview with Mark Obmascik on the PBSNewshour.  And yes, I found the story both trivial and fascinating:  In 1998, three people locked horns in an epic "Big Year" race to spot the most bird species in North America in the calendar year.

The current movie is a fictionalized account of this epic contest which pitted then all time Big Year world record holder Kenny Bostik (played by Owen Wilson) a physicist from New Jersey, Stu Preissler (played by Steve Martin) a retiring executive from New York, and Brad Harris (played by Jack Black) a recently divorced nuclear power plant software engineer from Maryland.

Each of the three faced potential sacrifices at home that few of us would want to comtemplate.  Bostik's wife Jessica (played by Rosamund Pike) on fertility treatments desperately wanted a child.  But how can one conceive if her husband's truly never around chasing birds?  Preissler was constantly being called back by his former chemical firm because in the dog-eat-dog world of Wall Street the firm's future and tens of thousands of jobs depended on his negotiating skills.  Additionally, his oldest son and daughter-in-law were expecting their first child.  Finally, both Brad's father (played by Brian Dennehy) and boss (played by Anthony Anderson) thought he was nuts and fundamentally irresponsible.  Brad did the Big Year while still trying to work full-time at his _nuclear power plant_ job.  Asking his boss to take an immediate unscheduled few days off to fly down to the Gulf of Mexico to catch "massive fallout" from a freak storm on the Gulf "during migratory bird season" that promised to knock hundreds of thousands of birds off course (and therefore carry birds from dozens of species that are generally _never seen_ in the United States to American shores), Brad's boss initially thought that Brad was talking about _nuclear fallout_.

During the course of the film the three encounter other birders including a just married couple taking their honeymoon on an utterly desolate island at the far tip of the Aleutian Islands chain (closer to Tokyo than to Anchorage, Alaska) at the peak of its migration season, as well as various rickety hotel and campground owners and boat and even helicopter excursion operators.  Noteworthy is the crusty pacific coast tour boat captain played by Angelica Houston who hated Bostik from the previous time he sought the Big Year record.  Why?  Because Bostik wanted her plow past a whale so that they could spot "some stupid bird."

Yes, the movie's about obsession and at a time virtually everybody is seeking to control their expenses, it's often shocking/gratuitous.  Brad maxed-out all kinds of credit cards to keep-up with the other serious competitors, something that today is well understood as leading to almost certain financial ruin.  Was it worth it?  Guess.

Still there is romance.  Unattached Brad does find a similarly obsessed female birder along the way.  And friendships are made.  Super-rich Stu takes pity on Brad and helps him out as well.  The Big Year is a Hollywood movie, so the story doesn't crash as painfully as it could have. 

What to think of a movie like this?  I generally take the side of dreaming.  But this movie certainly does invite the viewer to reflect on the costs of unthinkingly following them.

"Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.'" -- Luke 14:28-30


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Footloose (2011)

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068242/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv126.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111012/REVIEWS/111019994

Footloose (directed and screenplay and story updated by Craig Brewer) is based on the 1984 dance movie Footloose (directed by Herbert Ross, written by Dean Pitchford and starring Kevin Bacon / Lori Singer) celebrating teenage rebellion and rock and roll.   Since rock and roll has been around since the time of the grandparents of the kids involved in the 2011 update, the story becomes largely of a parable / reflection on grief than a reality based story about "accepting rock and roll."

Still, there are elements, largely gratuitous, added to the story in the update that would cause concern to many parents.  As such, the CNS/USCCB's morally offensive "O" rating is to be taken seriously especially if one considers allowing younger teens to see the film.

So what's the story about?  Responding to the tragic loss of five high school seniors driving home way too fast and inebriated from an unsupervised dance on someone's farm, a Tennessee town led by its local Presbyterian Pastor and town council member, Rev. Shaw Moore (played by Dennis Quaid) decides to ban loud music and public dancing.  To the movie's credit, the pain of Rev. Moore is quite sincerely portrayed: His own son was killed in the accident.  But is the reaction an over-reaction?  Rev. Moore has a teenage daughter, Ariel (played by Julianne Hough) who is also grieving the loss of her older brother but comes to resent her own youth being taken away from her and her friends.

Things come to a head three years after the accident when a newcomer Ren MacCormack (played by Kenny Wormald) from Boston comes to town to live with his uncle (played by Ray McKinnon) after his mother died.  Like the character played by Kevin Bacon in the 1984 version), he simply can not believe dancing (or loud music) could be banned like this.  And he carries some "grief cred" as well ... He had to watch his mother die of leukemia and move to a totally different part of the country afterwards.  Ren is also defended repeatedly by his uncle who repeatedly reminds the town-folk of the obvious: that they all used to listen to southern rock bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd growing-up and the city's ban on "loud music" and dancing simply made no sense. Still the pain of the accident remains present if diminishing.  Rev. Shaw's wife (and Ariel's mother) Vi (played by Angie MacDowell) plays an increasingly assertive role (on the side of her daughter) as the movie progresses.

All things are restored by the film's end and the town's youth are allowed to "dance happily ever after" at their Prom planned initially to be held just outside the town's city-limits but eventually receiving the town's and even the Reverend's blessing at the end.  The good/sincere Rev does, in fact, love his daughter.

What makes people frightened or over-react in face of tragedy?  Probably it's the shock.  But the movie does remind us that grief does (or ought to) pass.  Arguably, the movie could serve as a gentle reminder that the grief following even such national tragedies as 9/11, World War II, Communism, or even the Holocaust has to eventually pass, that yes, the youth growing-up years even decades after such tragedies deserve to live their lives too.

Does a "right to live" (or "to the pursuit of happiness" as the U.S. Declaration of Independence declares) include a right to be wildly reckless, promiscuous, etc?  Well the Church would of course (and rightly) say no.  But shouldn't one have a right to simply sing and dance?  Sure.  And Ren was right: Even King David danced like the uncouth shepherd's son that he was in front of the Ark of the Covenant when it was recovered and brought to Jerusalem to the embarrassment of his own wife (2 Samuel 6:1-23).  To be sure, dance can be lascivious (Mark 6:14-29).  But it also can be a sincere expression of life and of joy.

Finally, some good as well as some problematic elements present in this 2011 update to the 1984 original:

On the positive side, whereas the 1984 movie was a pretty much lily white affair, the 2011 update is far more multiracial.   Ariel's best friend is a Hispanic nicknamed Rusty (played by Ziah Colon).  The local high school and football team is fully integrated and even Ren's boss at his after school job is African American.  The contrast in this regard from the 1984 version is striking.

Much more problematic is some of Ariel's acting-out when she's rebelling against her father.  There's a scene where she's basically pole dancing at some venue.  For a more discerning viewer, I suppose the point being made would be that "in a situation where all dancing is illegal, then all kinds of dancing become equal."  But I would think that many parents would find the scene to be very disturbing.  Similarly, there's a scene in which Ariel defiantly tells to her (again, Rev) father that she no longer is a virgin (losing her virginity not to Ren, but to another character, a jerk, who she was dating at beginning of the movie).

It is for scenes such as these that the CNS/USCCB gives the movie an "O" (morally offensive) rating.  I also find these two scenes to be gratuitous, introducing needless difficulties to a movie that otherwise could have been family fare.

But a lot of teens are going to want to see the movie (and a lot of parents remembering the 1984 version may want to see it as well).  What to do?  May I suggest that parents make the movie a "teachable moment," taking the opportunity to talk to the teens about appropriate behavior ("pole dancing" ought to be "out") and even about appropriate expression of anger, above all making the point that just because one is angry doesn't give one the right to do anything, that such "acting out" often ends up hurting one in ways that one may not even imagine.  In this way, the movie could be "redeemed" for a family with younger teens, but I do wish that the film's makers had not made Ariel's character so needlessly provocative/problematic.


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Tucker and Dale vs Evil

MPAA (R) Roger Ebert (3 Stars) Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1465522/
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111005/REVIEWS/111009990

Tucker and Dale vs Evil (directed and co-written by Eli Craig along with Morgan Jurgenson) is not a profound movie ;-), but it seeks to right a decades-old wrong and so when I saw this movie advertised as coming to The Music Box theater here in Chicago number of weeks back, I made sure to not forget to go see it.  And it's all that it promised to be ;-).

Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are two happy-go-lucky hicks from Appalachia, smilin' from ear to ear, drinkin' Pabst in their pickup truck as they head to Tucker's new fixer-upper "vacation home" (a broken down shack) out in the woods, rented wood-chipper in tow, when they come across a group of college students in an SUV at a gas station who're heading-up to the same woods for a weekend camping trip.

Dale finds one of the girls, Allison (Katrina Bowden), cute, but bearded and sweaty, is too afraid to talk to her.  Tucker convinces him to take a chance.  So really, really nervous, and wishing to hold onto something as he does this, Dale picks up a gigantic metal scythe from the back of Tucker's pickup truck and walks over the college students to "make conversation."  It doesn't go well ... ;-)

The next time Tucker and Dale run into the college students is later that afternoon.  Tucker and Dale are out fishin' in their little boat and the college students, thinking that they are alone, decide to go skinny dipping.  Seeing Allison on a big rock getting into her underwear, Dale just wants to "say hi," and waves. She screams falls off the rock, hits her head and sinks like a stone into the water.  At this point, Tucker and Dale paddle over frantically to try to save her, while the other college students run-away screaming thinking that the two strange looking "hicks" wanted to kidnap them.

Tucker and Dale retrieve Allison from the water, take her to their ram-shackle cabin and wait for her to wake-up.  When she does, initially she screams but soon realizes that the two really just wanted to make sure that she's okay.

In the meantime, the other college students come-up with increasingly strange and desperate attempts to "save" Allison from the hicks, always with disastrous results.  In one case, one of the college students decides to lunge at Tucker with his pitifully small pocket knife (basically the size of a nail clipper).  Unawares, Tucker is happily running brush through his wood chipper "clearin' the yard."  The college student sneaks up on him, lunges ...  only to find Tucker ducking (to pickup a piece of wood) at the last moment and ... Traumatized and now covered with blood from the now terribly deceased college student, Tucker runs back to the cabin to tell Dale what had just happened.

The two come to the conclusion that these college students must have made some kind of a bizarre suicide pact ("college students do that sort of thing ...") because they can't believe how many college students they had seen "die like flies" in the previous twelve hours.  That's the story that they (still covered with blood from trying to remove the chipped down to his waste college student from the wood-chipper, wondering how they're ever gonna clean it before returning it to its owner) tell a local cop who comes to the cabin to investigate complaints made by the college students.  Needless to say, the cop's not particularly convinced by the two hicks' story, but a terrible accident soon befalls the cop as well...

The only one who seems to understand what's going on (and isn't covered with blood ...) is Allison (who actually is almost always dressed in white).  A psych major, she starts to see Tucker and Dale as truly nice if terribly unlucky guys and tries to make peace between them and the increasingly smaller group of her college student friends.  It all, ends ... kinda ... well ;-).

After decades of "hicks are evil" mad-slasher flicks, I found the film  a "nice change of pace" ;-).

There's probably too much blood -- buckets of it really -- for the truly squeamish.  Still, I do think that even a 10 year old would understand this "story" to be "just a story."  And maybe a ten year old would appreciate even more than an adult the, yes, rather sick (but "kinda cool"... ;-) humor of watching a desperate but really, really determined college student, armed with a two inch pocket knife, lunging head-first into a wood-chipper ;-).  But there ya have it ... ;-)

So overall, it wouldn't be a particularly bad movie to find/rent for Halloween ;-).


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The Way [2010]

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441912/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv124.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111005/REVIEWS/111009987/1023

The Way [2010] (written and directed by Emilio Estevez) is a story that may, at times, (rightfully) irritate more traditional Catholics even as all of us would probably recognize/appreciate the story's honesty and reality.  Most Americans will also be familiar with the going-ons/sufferings of the Sheen/Estevez family of late and this only adds to the story's poignancy.

Widower, opthamologist Tom (played by Martin Sheen) from Ventura, California (on the Pacific Coast Highway, between Santa Barbara and L.A.) with a grown but wayward only son gets the phone call that all parents dread: His son, Daniel (played by Emilio Estevez), has died.  Daniel, who had been studying for a doctorate in cultural anthropology had quit grad-school, calling it a waste of time and had gone out into the world to witness for himself the things that he had been studying.  Even as Tom is listening to the French gendarme calling from the foothills of the Pyrenees telling him of Daniel's death, Tom's mind flashes back to the last time he saw his son -- as he was driving him to the airport in a driving rain getting a lecture from him about how he (the father) had chosen "to never really live."  Tom packs his bag and flies to France to retrieve the body of his son.

When Tom reaches the Pyrenees a day-or-two later and identifies the body, the English-speaking gendarme Capt. Henri (played by Tcheky Karyo) who had talked to him on the phone, explains to him that Daniel had apparently just set off  to walk the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.  The Camino was a famous medieval pilgrimage route that begins in the French Pyrenees and continues to the northwestern corner of Spain at the town of Santiago de Compsostela where by tradition the body of St. James the Apostle was to be found.

Niether Tom nor Daniel had been particularly religious.  However, as a cultural anthropologist Daniel could have found the tradition of this Camino interesting.  Daniel apparently had set-off to make the journey alone, and probably against the advice of the locals, walked straight into a snow storm and died.

The genderme, who had made the Camino three times in his life, hands over to Tom Daniel's backpack and "Camino passport" which it would have been stamped at all the towns and pilgrimage sites along the route and expresses his condolences.  Daniel's passport had but one stamp, that of the town to which Tom had come to retrieve his body at the start of the journey.

Spending the night in a pension with Daniel's backpack and all-but-empty passport, Tom comes back to the gendermarie (police station) the next day, asks that Daniel's body be cremated, calls his secretary back in Ventura, CA telling her to simply move his appointments to another doctor for the next several months and decides to make the pilgrimage for his son himself.   Touched, the genderme arranges what needs to be arranged.  A few days later with Daniel's backpack and box of ashes, Tom sets off on his journey receiving the blessing of Capt. Henri wishing him a "buen camino."  And an adventure of a lifetime ensues.

Not more than a couple of hours after leaving the French town, Tom comes across a fresh wooden cross made along the way and realizes that this was probably where his son had died.  In perhaps the most controversial aspect of the film (from a Catholic perspective) Tom decides to leave some of his son's ashes there (and decided from then on to some of Daniel's ashes scattered at various places along the route.  One gets what Tom does, and certainly many Americans today would do the same.  Still Tom could have had Daniel buried in the French town where he had died, and then simply prayed or left another token (perhaps a photo, perhaps something sles) at each of the sites instead.

Still, throughout the journey, Tom repeatedly encounters glimpses of Daniel walking the route with him and smiling.  If the two had never really reconciled in life, at least in death, they were walking together (and Daniel was able to show his father a little of what he, in fact, had enjoyed so much).

Along the way, Tom meets other people.  After all, this remains a very popular hiking/pilgrimage route to this day.  None of the three fellow-travelers that he meets in particular -- the seemingly happy-go-lucky pot smoking epicurianist Dutchman Joost (played by Yorick van Wageningen), the middle-aged angry big-chip-on-her-shoulder carrying Canadian Sarah (played by Deborah Kara Unger) and the somewhat crazy Irish travel-log writing one-time James Joyce wannabee Jack (played by James Nesbitt) -- appears to be making the trek for particularly religious reasons.  Yet, Jack (the travel-log writing/reading Irishman) declares that as far as he has read about the Camino de Santiago de Compostela truly everyone on this journey absolutely belongs there.  And yes, walking together, they repeatedly get on each other's nerves ;-).  Yet each offers the others much in their journey as well.  Thanks to the Dutchman (on the journey actually to lose weight) they eat very, very well.  Thanks to the Irishman they learn a lot of the history.  And thanks to the American and the Canadian, they learn that there's both a lot of brokenness in this world, and a lot of healing that can take place on a journey like this.

I thank Emilio Estevez and the Sheen family in general for making a movie like this.  It took some courage.  Again, it's not entirely orthodox.  But I already remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was studying down in Southern California that Martin Sheen in particular had been brave in proclaiming, defending and above all living his Catholicism in a milieu where this certainly has not been not easy.

This film gives America's Catholics much to reflect on and much to be proud of and certainly offers grown children and their parents everywhere an opportunity to talk about things that really matter.  Great, great  job!


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Detective Dee and the Phantom Flame (orig. Di Renjie)

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1123373/
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110921/REVIEWS/110929994

Detective Dee and the Phanton Flame, orig. Di Renjie (directed by Hark Tsui, written by Kuo-fu Chen and Jialu Zhang based on the original story Lin Qianyu) is an expertly filmed, Mandarin language, English subtitled film about a popular/larger than life Chinese official named Di Renjie who lived at the time of the Tang Dynasty during the reign/regency of Wu Zetien (690-705 AD).  Wu Zetien was arguably the only female Emperor in the history of China.

My only substantive complaint about the movie would be that I do believe that this movie should have been dubbed into English.  Visually the film was so good, that it was a shame that one had to be distracted from the film by having to look down to read the subtitled.  However, if one likes history, sword and sorcery fantasy (though this movie was based at least in part on history) or martial arts (ie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)) then one would probably like this film.

Indeed, the film's a reminder that Chinese young people are among the most avid players of internet based fantasy role playing games in the world today, testified to by Chinese World of Warcraft fans having created a full-length animated film (using the game itself as its set) called War Against Internet Addiction to protest Chinese internet censorship ;-).  All this is to say that Detective Dee was almost certainly not intended to be "an art film," but rather a Chinese "Indiana Jones meets King Arthur" film intended for popular, indeed world-wide appeal.  And with the exception of the lack of dubbing, I do believe it largely even spectacularly succeeds.

So what is the movie about?  Set just before the coronation of Wu Zetien (played by Carina Lau) the builders of gigantic female statue of the Buddha just outside the Imperial palace are horrified when a number of those in charge of the statue's construction die of apparent spontaneous human combustion.  Were they struck down by supernatural forces for disturbing (attempting to steal) a number of the mysterious amulets that had been placed in a repository at the base of the statue to protect the workers building the statue during its construction as assistant to the (deceased) lead foreman Shatuo Zhong (played by Tony Leung Ka Fai) believes?  Or was there a more mundane reason for their deaths (assassination by opponents of Wu, about to become the first woman emperor of China)?   In any case, after a mysterious appearance of Wu Zetien's Buddhist spiritual advisor (appearing to her in the form of a talking deer) she is told that the best person to put on the case would be Di Renjie (judge or detective Dee, played by Andy Lau).

There is a small problem, however, Di Renjie was jailed by Wu Zetien after the death of the previous emperor as a possible opponent to her.  For his part in treason, he had been blinded and was working now as one responsible for the burning of old official government correspondence after it was deemed no longer important to keep.  What good would a blind "detective" be?  To find out, Wu sends her trusted female assistant Shangguan Jing'er (played by Bingbing Li) to find Di Renjie and see if he could really be of assistance.  Jing'er finds that Di Renjie was much smarter than even his opponents had taken him to be, that he had managed to dodge his blinding sentence and that had actually taken the opportunity to read all those documents that he was responsible for burning.  So he was more than ready (and informed) to take-up the case.

Many adventures ensue.  The culprits for the spontaneous human combustion assissinations turn out to be phosphorus eating fire beetles.  By the end of the film, the conspirators are uncovered by the good judge/detective Di (and Di and Wu also find a way to make peace with each other, even if Wu had sent Di to prison to be blinded so many years ago).

Why would Di do that, accept a peace with someone who had sought to hurt him, indeed blind him before?  It would seem because he never took his sentence personally.  Indeed, one could say that there's a lot of recent Chinese history embedded in this story as well -- Di, a court official and intellectual, having been sentenced to be blinded and forced to burn books, only to be asked to come back and help the Empress (and the nation) in time of need.  

Aall this is done in good humor and with a lot martial arts tumbling and Chinese style magic -- those fire beetles, acupuncture, amulets and so forth.

I found the movie very entertaining and visually stunning.  I just wish that I didn't have to keep dropping down to read those subtitles. 


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