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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Anonymous

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1521197/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv134.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111026/REVIEWS/111029990

Anonymous (directed by Ronald Emmerlich, screenplay by John Orloff) questioning William Shakespeare's authorship of his plays and sonnets is bound to ruffle feathers and produce knee jerk rejections comparable to knee-jerk rejections (usually by America's right) of Oliver Stone's famous film JFK (1991) about the John F. Kennedy's assassination.

I'd actually prefer to compare Anonymous' portrayal of Elizabeth I's reign in England to the portrayal of the papacy of Alexander VI (and his family...) in the recent cable television series The Borgias.  To be sure, Pope Alexander VI did father many children, made one of his sons a Cardinal and married off (and annulled the marriages) of his daughter Lucretia according to the whims of politics on the still fractured Italian peninsula.

Yet as objectively morally corrupt as Pope Alexander VI's reign was, the recent series about him did still play with the historical facts in ways that were almost certainly untrue.  For instance, as I noted in my review of the Borgia series, one episode had one of Alexander VI's sons actually strangle an Ottoman prince (at the request of the Ottoman emperor ...) with his own hands.  That just doesn't seem comprehensible.  That Alexander VI as a recognized ruler of a sovereign state at the time, the Papal States, would do such a favor (of getting rid of an inconvenient rival) for another sovereign is plausible.  After all, taking a page from our own recent post 9/11 history: We, the United States do not torture.  So we've had the Egyptians and Jordanians torture people for us... Yet, to have Alexander VI's own son do the job with his bare hands would be akin to having a film or television series showing our former vice-President Dick Cheney personally water-boarding inmates at Guantanamo Bay (or more secret prisons at "undisclosed locations" around the globe).  Yes, Cheney was (and remains) all for torture.  But would he do so himself?  Probably not.

Returning now to Anonymous.  The film suggests that Elizabeth I had at least three illegitimate sons by three different lovers, two of them while Queen of England.  How could that be?  The film has her disappearing on "a journey" for the duration of at least one of her pregnancies.  Would not the royal court in London miss her?  Would not her mortal enemy Philip II of Spain catch wind of news like this and use the opportunity to strike England then?

Yet the Tudors (2007-2010) themselves were portrayed in another recent cable-series as being more than a bit randy.  And the stories of the Czars, the Chinese Emperors, modern dictators and their families (like the recent shocker The Devil's Double about a body double of Uday Hussein), are all filled with stories of seemingly unbounded hypocrisy and corruption.   So what to make of it?  I would propose two options: (1) The powerful were always quite capable of doing unspeakable things and covering them up ("Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely..."). (2) One should view "historical" films with a critical eye, recognizing obvious places where playwrights, film-makers and story-tellers may be tempted to play with the truth to tell a better, more compelling story.  Indeed, Oliver Stone has at times appealed to Shakespeare's historical plays as a means understanding his own "historical" movie-making: historical story-telling need not be about getting all the facts right, rather about getting the essence of the era/man/etc correct.

So whatever one may say about Oliver Stone's JFK, there are aspects of the official version of events that are suspicious.  And it's not simply an "incongruency" that "a loser shot like Lee Harvey Oswald killed a President."  That "loser" Oswald, had a very strange (suspicious) life:  He was a United States Marine.  He defected to Russia, returned a few years later no questions asked, was taped on television talk shows in New Orleans expressing strong opinions about Fidel Castro, and then some months later shot the President.  And he himself was assassinated on live television by someone, Jack Ruby, with underworld ties, as he was being transferred from the Dallas jail before any public hearing.  The case simply doesn't smell right, no matter how much Oswald has been portrayed as "simply a loser."  If he was such a loser, why kill him before he was allowed to speak?

Similarly, in Anonymous, the salacious details ultimately don't really matter.  If nothing else, the film does remind the viewer Elizabethan era was a dangerous one.  I remember a conversation with a number of more intellectual Catholics a number of years back, where one (not a Shakespeare scholar but someone who was certainly fairly well read on the matter) who argued to me that Shakespeare may have been Catholic.  His proof: that Shakespeare scrupulously did not refer to Catholic-Protestant controversies at all in his work.  If he were Protestant, like say John Milton, he would have probably made his Protestantism clear.  Instead, Shakespeare kept his mouth shut on the matter.  That's the point that this fairly well read Catholic on the matter was making.  I'd add here that while Shakespeare did not refer to religion much in his work, he did write a heck of a lot about Italy, which would seem rather odd and perhaps even suspicious at a time when Elizabethan England was in a death duel with both the Pope and Catholic King Philip II of Spain.  It could be something like "Reading Lolita in Tehran" today.

In any case, it should be becoming clear that being a playwright in Elizabethan England wouldn't necessarily have been the safest of occupations.  A person of learning writing at the time could have had reason to write under a pseudonym or perhaps even feed his work to a lower class "distributor" (in this case "theater owner") to protect himself.  Because lets face it, some of Shakespeare's work could be interpreted as being "political" by a paranoid regime (or paranoid functionaries in a paranoid regime).  To put oneself a step-away from its production could have been safer for the writer.  I would note here that people fairly well known people, including Mark Twain, did not believe that William Shakespeare of Stratford really wrote Shakespeare's plays.  So while the current film, could be clumsy and swinging from the chandeliers salacious in its argumentation, the question of Shakespeare's authorship (or ought to be) more serious than one could initially think.  Either that, or Shakespeare was one very, very brave man.  A very good article on the question (that ultimately and resolutely defends William Shakespeare's authorship of his plays) can be found, of course, on wikipedia.

So other than that, how was the film? ;-)

From a technical point of view, the film was certainly excellent.  The sets were magnificent.  One got a feel of what it would have been like to be like sitting (or standing on the floor level) watching one of Shakespeare's plays at the Globe Theater in London at the time.  London is portrayed as (what a surprise...) gloomy, rainy most of the time.  However, as in other recent, more "political" films about the era -- Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: the Golden Age (2007)  the rain and general darkness/gloominess are probably intended to be more than just a statement on English climate.  Rather they are intended to be metaphors to the darkness whole period.  As I mentioned above, the political dimensions of various plays (like Henry V, Hamlet, Macbeth and especially Richard III) were probably stressed in this film more than most people would initially think.

The film portrays Elizabeth I (played in her younger years by Joely Richardson and later by Vanessa Redgrave) as more of a ditz than I would have liked, manipulated heavily by her advisor William Cecil (played by David Thewlis).  William Cecil was also presented as the caretaker/foster father and later father-in-law of Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford  (played in his younger years by Jamie Cambell Bower and later by Ryan Ilfans) who the movie presents as the real author of Shakespeare's plays.

Edward, the Earl of Oxford a poet/writer is presented as hating William Cecil's narrow, arguably Talabanish, Protestantism, one which viewed poetry as basically vanity.  (Since Cecil was his father-in-law, the movie plays up the scene in Hamlet when Hamlet somewhat comically kills Ofelia's father Laertes "look a rat" (stabbing him as he was hiding behind a curtain).  Laertes was to become Hamlet's father-in-law and Laertes served as the Queen's advisor in the play).

Shakespeare himself (played by Rafe Spall) was portrayed in an exaggerated manner as a baffoon, someone who as an actor had learned to read but who'd utterly incapable of writing plays, let alone poetry in his own right.

A key character in the film is another playwright, Ben Johnson (played by Sebastian Armesto).  Johnson is introduced as a playwright already in trouble with the authorities for the supposed politics in his works (even though he produced only low class comedies).  The Earl of Oxford springs from jail but then under the condition that Johnson produce his, the Earl's, plays under the name Anonymous.  The anonymity of the playwright was supposed to actually protect both the Earl and Johnson.  However, something soon goes wrong, after a particularly stirring performance of Henry V, the crowd demands that the author take a bow.  The Earl's in the stands, Johnson does not want to get into further trouble with the authorities.  So Shakespeare, one of Johnson's actors steps up and takes a bow ... The story proceeds from there ...

Again, the film itself has many holes.  I myself can't get past Elizabeth I's supposed three illegitimate children.  I just don't know a pregnancy, let alone repeated pregnancies, could be hidden on a supposedly Virgin queen.  However, the possibility that Shakespeare did not actually write the works attributed to him, I find interesting because I would understand why someone living at that time (and under those political/religious circumstances) would want perhaps to keep a certain distance from his writings.


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Puss in Boots

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448694/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/11mv132.htm
Roger Moore's review -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-mov-1025-puss-in-boots-20111027,0,4915188.story


Puss in Boots (directed by Chris Miller, character by Charles Perault, screenplay by Tom Wheeler) a spin-off prequel about the life of Puss in Boots [IMDb] (voice by Antonio Banderas) prior to appearing in the Shrek 2 had fairly large boots to fill, and IMHO largely succeeded.

For while most American families will probably know Puss in Boots [IMDb] today mostly from the Shrek series where he appears as an eminently honorable, sophisticated sword-fighting El Cid, Musketeer, Zorro-like figure, he was originally an invention of 17th century French story-writer Charles Perault appearing as a character in Perault's Mother Goose stories (something important to understand in the current film).  However even in Perault's, 17th century stories, Le Chat Botté (the booted cat) was a booted sword-fighting cat with, well, savoir faire ;-). 

The current film has Puss' story take place that looks like either rural Spain or the American South-West during Spanish colonial times.  He grew-up an orphan in an orphanage in a small town called San Ricardo, cared for foster-mother Imelda (voice by Constance Marie) with childhood friend/fellow orphan Humpty Dumpty (voice by Zach Galifianakis).  Together apparently, the two orphans entered into a shady sort of life if not of outright crime, then certainly not on the "up and up," to the heart break of their loving foster-mother/caretaker Imelda.  Indeed, through the whole movie one is left wondering if Humpty Dumpty is really a "good egg" or a "bad" one ;-).

Anyway, seeking to make some easy money, the two along with Kitty Softpaws (voice by Salma Hayek), a grifter cat who Humpty Dumpty picked-up along the way, run into Jack and Jill (voices by Billy Bob Thorton and Amy Sedaris) imagined in this story to be a couple of Bonnie and Clyde / Jesse James types (and here I had thought that "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water..." :-).

The two, Jack and Jill, have apparently come across some magic seeds that when planted would grow into a giant bean-stalk (Jack and the Bean Stalk) so tall that it'd reach the clouds, where they could find a Goose that lays golden eggs.  This was too good a scam for Puss, Humpty Dumpty and Kitty Salfpaws to pass up.

Much happens.  And of course it all "ends well."  The question of what kind of an egg, Humpty Dumpty is, is sort of resolved.  And one certainly learns an eminently Hispanic lesson that the worst thing that one could do is to disappoint one's loving mother.  (Imelda plays a big role in this movie).

All in all I liked it.  To be honest, I do feel that Kitty Softpaws (voiced by Salma Hayek after all) was drawn in a somewhat disappointing way.  Her voice was full of attitude but looking at her, she didn't look particularly special.  Perhaps this was intentional, but I do have to say that I was somewhat disappointed. But Puss in Boots was a dashing/sophisticated and Zorro-like as I expected him.

Anyway, the movie's safe, teaches some good lessons (Kids, don't disappoint your mother...) and is fun.  I'd certainly recommend it to most families with small kids.


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Take Shelter [2011]

MPAA (R) Roger Ebert (4 Stars) Fr. Dennis (2 Stars)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review

Take Shelter (written and directed by Jeff Nichols) is an independent film that has been getting rave reviews from critics.  As such, it may be a film that becomes significant come Oscar season.  However, I have my difficulties with it.

The film is about a man named Curtis (played by Michael Shannon) from rural Texas.  He has a farm house, and holds a steady job in a nearby quarry.  He's married to a young woman named Samantha (played by Jessica Chastain) and together they have a young daughter named Hannah (played by Tova Stewart).

It's a good and honest life, except that Curtis himself is starting to suspect that his mind may be going, that he's slowly going insane.  And he has reason to believe that this could be happening.  He starts being tormented by increasingly terrible dreams, mostly about a storm unlike any other -- wind, tornadoes and a downpour of thick oil-like rain.  At work, he starts to freak-out his best friend and co-worker, Dewart (played by Shea Wingham) by frequently hearing strange noises and seeing strange formations of birds that no one else sees.  It turns out that Curtis' mother (played by Cathy Baker) had come down with schizophrenia when she was his age, and during the course of the film he does go to visit her at the psychiatric assisted living facility where she lives to this day. 

So the setup of the film is very good and it is clear that Curtis himself suspects that something not right is starting to go on in his mind.  Further, in as much as he can -- he and his wife don't have a lot of money and he does have a full-time job -- he does seek psychological help.  But the dreams don't stop him from doing some increasingly disturbing things.  Notably, he takes money that he and Samantha had been saving for a vacation (or more probably to use for their daughter, who has her own medical problems, she's deaf) and spends it on radically expanding the storm shelter that they already had in their backyard.  He also becomes increasingly erratic (and absent) at work, at stake there being not just Curtis' income but also his health insurance.

So faced with increasingly erratic behavior of her husband, Samantha has to increasingly step-up and step-in, to confront him and try to keep him in line.

All this would make for an _excellent movie_.  What I did not like about the movie, honestly, is its ending.  It is open to multiple interpretations, but IMHO the most obvious interpretation really cheapens the rest of the film.

I saw this movie, Take Shelter, several weeks ago and had refrained from putting-up a review of it until now, because I so disliked the ending of the film.   However, another independent film Martha Marcy May Marlene (starring Elizabeth Olsen) is also about a character losing (her) grip on reality.  So it probably serves to provide a review the film now because the two films could be interesting to consider together.  In any case, my favorite film of recent years about schizophrenia is A Beautiful Mind (2001) which starred Russell Crowe.


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Margin Call [2011]

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1615147/
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20111019/REVIEWS/111019980

Margin Call [2011] (written and directed by J.C. Chandor) is a Wall Street drama obviously inspired by the events leading up to the financial collapse of 2008.

The movie begins on a day of internal housecleaning in the life of a highly competitive Wall Street firm.  Outside hired hatchet-folk are brought in to deliver the news to a fair percentage of the firm's traders and other employees that their jobs are being terminated.  They tell them that "it's nothing personal."  To some employees being terminated with more sensitive jobs they add, "We regret that we're going to have to take some steps with you that are going to look 'punitive' but these are not understood as a reflection of your past work here.  Instead, they are being done simply to protect the firm's security." 

One of the people being terminated "in a manner that may seem punitive" is Erik Dale (played by Stanley Tucci) the head of the firm's risk assessment department.  After being told by the outsourced hatchet-folk that he's being terminated, he's given a box to clear the "personal effects" from his office while a security guard stands at the door watching him do so.  When Erik seeks to go to his computer, he's told not to touch it anymore.  He protests saying that he's "been working on something fairly important (even to the firm that he's leaving)."  He's told that it doesn't matter, that it's not his concern anymore and that his passwords had been changed at the moment of his firing anyway. 

Being escorted with his box of personal affects in-hand by the security guard to the elevator, Eric runs into one of his former assistants, Peter Sullivan (played by Zachary Quinto).  He hands Peter a flash drive telling him "I had been working on this in these last couple of weeks.  Please take a look at it.  I think you'll find it interesting."  With that Eric arrives at the elevator, security guard at his side.  Eric and Pete look at each other, not even having a chance to really say goodbye.  And with this the elevator door closes.  When Eric arrives at the ground floor and is finally escorted to the exit of the building, he tries to make a call on his (company) cell phone -- to his wife? to Peter?  One's not sure -- but it doesn't matter because the cell phone has been disconnected.  Eric takes the defunct cell-phone and smashes it on the pavement in front of the building saying "F-U..."

After the culling of a fair percentage of the traders at the firm is completed, the floor's senior manager Sam Rogers (played by Kevin Spacey) steps out of his office to give them a pep-talk.  He tells them that their former co-workers are gone, to not think of them again, to understand that they remain at the firm because they are deemed valuable, and finally to consider this culling as an opportunity: "Five people who stood in your way from your boss' job are now gone. Now work hard so that one day it will be yours."

After Sam returns back to his office, Sam's assistant, Will Emerson (played by Paul Bettany) who actually manages the traders on the floor for Sam stops-in to give his approval of Sam's speech.  The moment gives Sam a chance to express a surprising moment of humanity.  This fleeting glimpse of humanity is not expressed in any concern about the culling of the floor that just took place. Indeed as senior floor manager, he would have made the decisions of who to cut.  Instead, he tells Will that he's broken-up over the deteriorating health of his dog, that he might have to put the dog to sleep.  Will is somewhat bewildered by Sam's odd/distracted comment about his dog -- again 1/3, 1/2 or even 2/3 of the floor had just been let go -- but since Sam's his boss, Will nods with strained understanding.

Among the people surviving the culling are Erik's two young former assistants in the firm's "risk assessment" department: Peter who was given the flash-drive by Erik and Seth Bregman (played by Penn Badgley).  They realize that with Erik gone, their boss is now Will.  As work ends, Peter and Seth go out to a bar.  Still somewhat stunned by the mass firing (apparently the first time that they went through such a thing) they banter about it at the bar and about other random things.  Each apparently taking to heart Sam's pep-talk at the end of the culling, Seth seems to wonder how much Will (his new boss) makes, while Peter decides to go back to the office to look at the flash drive that Erik gave him as he left.

When they return to the office, they run into Will.  Will and Seth want to go out again, but Peter decides to stay to play with the figures that Erik had left him on the flash drive.  So Will and Seth go out to play, while Peter plays with the info that he had received.  Soon however, Peter realizes what Erik was working on and the implications of this to the future of the firm:  The firm, like many others on Wall Street had been purchasing mortgages from banks, shuffling them around, repackaging them and reselling them back to investors.  Erik, as head of risk assessment for the firm had been analyzing the risk to the firm of hanging on to these mortgages while the firm hung-on to them even as it combined them with others for resale.  Well Erik had found that keeping these mortgages on the firm's books for the period of time that it took to reshuffle them for resale (about a month) was proving to be increasingly risky to the firm, to the point that it could crash the firm in a time period far shorter than it took the firm to prepare them for resale.  And since other firms were doing this kind of mortgage paper-reshuffling as well, as soon as someone found out that these mortgage products being sold were dangerous, the market (along with firms like theirs) would completely collapse. 

What to do? -- Well Peter calls Will and Seth back to the office.  Will, a business manager not a mathematician, tells Peter that he's going to have explain this to him is if he were a 10 year old.  Peter explains the urgency to will with sufficient clarity that, even if it was the middle of the night, Will calls Sam his boss to come back to the office immediately.

Within an hour, Sam arrives, quickly understands the urgency as well, and soon the big brass is called in.  These include Sarah Robertson (played by Demi Moore) and Jared Cohen (played by Simon Baker) who had been the firm's chief designers and marketers of these mortgage products and John Tuld (played by Jeremy Irons) the firm's CEO who arrives on helicopter.

They all come to a hastily arranged meeting, where Sam presents Will who presents Peter, who presents Erik's results.  John Tuld interrogates:
     "Where's Erik?"
     "Well we just let him go."
     "Peter, what's your background?"
     "Well I have a PhD from MIT on friction profiles in fuel injection systems of rocket engines."
      "So you're literally a rocket scientist.  What are you doing here?"
      "Well at the end of the day it's all numbers and to be frank, your pay is much better than in the aerospace field."

Sarah Robertson, the mortgage products' chief designer who knew Erik and knew some of his concerns about the risks, asks that she and her assistant Ramech Shah (played by Aasiv Mandvi) check the numbers.  They're given some time, less than an hour to do so.  The come back reporting that the numbers are right.

What then to do?  That's when John Tuld tells the group: "I've learned that there are three ways to make it in this business: Be smart, be first or cheat."  He continues, "we don't cheat."  (So that's off the table).  "And while we're pretty smart, I'm sure that a lot of other people on this street are pretty smart as well. So we're left with being first.'"

The rest of the movie is about the firm struggling quickly (by dawn) to respond to this discovery first.

The movie is excellent, reminding me of  Oliver Stone's movie of last year Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and last year's Oscar Winning documentary Inside Job.

This movie, Margin Call, adds to the conversation and gives the viewer much to think about.  Among the interesting things presented in the film are: (1) that a fair amount of the managers on Wall Street are not particularly bright (and know that are not particularly bright) but are good salesmen or managers, and (2) that a fair number of the brightest minds on Wall Street today are like Peter (and there are others in this film) who not even from the finance fields but arriving (pillaged?) from other fields.

And of course, the question that our whole society is asking is raised:  What do these finance people actually do?  Well, they move around numbers and lots and lots of money.  An engineer, in contrast, would actually be building or at least designing something.  But are the financial engineers doing the same if on a different level?  When does "friction" become real?


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