The Secret World of Arrietty (orig. Kari-gurashi no Arietti) [2010]

MPAA (G) CNS/USCCB (A-I) Michael Phillips (3 1/2 Stars) Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568921/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv021.htm
Michael Phillip's review -
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-02-16/entertainment/sc-mov-0214-secret-world-of-arrietty-20120216_1_studio-ghibli-animation-borrowing

The Secret World of Arrietty (orig. Kari-gurashi no Arietti) directed by Hiromasa Yonesbayahshi, screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa) is a lovely children's animated film voiced here in English, made by the famed Japanese Studio Ghibly and distributed in the United States by Disney based on the first of the children's book series The Borrowers (Amazon [1] [2]) by Mary Norton. 

It's about a family of tiny people called "borrowers" -- 14 year old Arrietty (voiced by Brigit Medler [US version] and Saoirie Ronan [UK version]) and her parents Pod (voiced by Will Arnett [US version] and Mark Strong [UK verison]) and Homily (voiced by Amy Poehler [US version] and Olivia Colman [UK version]) -- who live under the floorboards of houses and are responsible for taking (err... "borrrowing") little items that we find/discover that we've "lost" or "misplaced" in our homes.

Ideally the items that these really tiny little people take are things that we wouldn't particularly miss anyway. So on one of the early adventures in the story, Pod and Arriety set out on an expedition to "bring home a sugar cube."  On the way, Arrietty finds a clothes pin, which becomes her "sword."  It's all really, really cute.

The life of these little borrowers is, however, fraught with danger.  Relatively small animals like cats, crows and even mice that we find around our domestic confines appear really big to them, and these animals have been known to eat the borrowers that they catch.  Further, people don't seem to differentiate much between "borrowers" and other "household pests."  So when they spot a borrower, more often than not, they call an exterminator to deal with their pest problem.

That then sets the stage for the story here.  A little Japanese boy named Sho (in the US version named Shawn, voiced by David Henrie [US version] and Tom Holland [UK version]) awaiting a major surgery is sent to rest in the countryside by his great-aunt (voiced by Gracie Poletti [US Version], Phyllida Law [UK version].  (In the original books, the Boy was English sent by his great-aunt into the English countryside to recuperate from Rheumatic Fever that he contracted while in India).  The house is where his mother had grown-up.  And when he arrives, he spots one of the "borrowers."

He's all excited because his mother had told him about them.  The borrowers are terrified, however, in particular mother Hillary, because being spotted by the humans generally means "bad things will happen to them," and actually "children are often worse than the adults." (Presumably human children would treat them as they would bugs and other small creatures, that is, bring out the spy/magnifying glasses, put them in jars, while forgetting to feed them, etc...).

Actually, Sho's quite nice.  But the caretaker of the house Karin in the Japanese/UK versions, Hara in the US version (voiced by Carol Burnett [US version] and Geraldine McEvan [UK version]) wants to call the exterminator.  So much ensues ... but Sho, himself lonely and facing suffering turns out to be a good protector/friend to the frightened little borrowers.

The drawing in this film is just beautiful.  The garden scenes in particular are beautifully captured as are the (seemingly) huge dew/rain drops that adorn the blades of grass and the flowers every morning.  It makes one want to cry.

And the story reminded me a lot of a Czech children's classic Broučci (Fireflies) about a family of fireflies that came out in England, in English translation during the war years, 1942, some years before Mary Norton's The Borrowers (1952) was first published.  There are clear differences in the story but there are also similarities (the greatest of which being the portrayal of the world from the perspective of a really, really small anthropomorphic being -- similar to the "sugar-cube" episode described above in Arrietti, the fireflies in Broučci would drink wine out of a grape ... ;-).

Anyway, it wouldn't bother me at all if Mary Norton could was influenced or partly inspired by that Czech children's story.  I just want to note that the other story was also very, very cute and that probably stories like this (about "little people") are going to tend to be very, very nice.


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The House (orig Dom / Dům) [2011]

Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821406/

CSFD listing [CZ] [Eng-(Google)Trans]
CSFD reviews [CZ/SK][Eng-(Google)Trans]

The House (orig Dom [sk]/ Dům [cz]) written and directed by Zuzana Liová (CSFD listing Eng. translation unavailable), a young Slovak born director, is a joint Czech and Slovak production that recently played at the 15th Annual European Union Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.

Set in a small Slovakian town in the mountains, it is a lovely current film about a clash of generational aspirations and expectations:

Inrich (played by Miroslav Krobot [IMDB] [CSFD]) is trying to be a good father by building a house for his daughter Eva (played by Judit Bardos [IMDB] [CSFD]) about to graduate from high school, the house of course being right next door to her parents' home ... ;-).

Eva, of course, has completely different plans.  She wants to go to London to work as an au pair (nanny) to see something of the world in this way, and, yes, implicit in this, perhaps score an English husband ...  A rather smart/talented teen, she's successfully put-up an online profile on an au-pair website and she's been saving-up money for the cost of getting to England by writing term-papers for her less ambitious classmates.

Part of the tragedy implicit in the story is that Eva is clearly a very smart young woman.  And what does she want to do with her life?  Go to College?  Clearly she's bright enough, and indeed, that's Inrich's Plan-B.  He's even saved up money to help her go to college, but will give her the money that he's saved up for her only if she does that.  Instead, Eva wants to go to England to work as a nanny for a couple of years and hopefully get married there.

So the two are at loggerheads.  What does ma', Viera (played by Tatjana Medvedská [IMDB] [CSFD] ) think of all this?  Well, clearly she's unhappy, sees a coming train wreck between her husband and her daughter and seems powerless to stop it.

Worst of all, she's seen all this before.  After Inrich had forbidden their older daughter Jana (played by Lucia Jašková [IMDB][CSFD]) from "going to Norway" after her graduation (Why Norway? Well, like the younger sis' Eva's dreams of England, Norway would be an attainable goal not all that far from Slovakia. And well, Norway's somewhere "other than Slovakia..." ;-), Jana got back at her father by marrying the amiable but rather loser of a son of a former "two bit" Communist party official that her dad hated.  By the film's start, Jana has three kids with said amiable "loser" and Inrich has no clue of how to reconcile with Jana, her husband (who he hates) and thus with his three grand-kids that he has through through them.

Being forced by her father to stay in town (or at least in/near Czecho-Slovakia), Eva starts "acting out" as well by entering into an illicit relationship with a man in his 30s, Jakub (played by Marián Mitaš [IMDB] [CSFD]), who turns out to be her English teacher her final semester at school. (Jakub had just returned from England to Slovakia because his Slovak wife "wanted a house..." when Eva first meets him.  What kind of a job can someone returning to rural Czecho-Slovakia get after having spent many years in England?  He becomes an English teacher at the local high school...).

A relationship such as this between a high school student and teacher is, of course, illegal / immoral in most parts of the world today.  So it ends badly.  As soon as the two are found out, Jakub is summarily fired by the school's Principal and Eva is barely allowed to graduate.

But what are Inrich and Viera going to do now?  Having already horribly botched their relationship with their older daughter Jana, now Eva's acting out and they're at the precipice again.  That's what the rest of the movie is about...

A few notes coming from someone like me, who is of Czech descent ;-), that may help the non-Czech or non-Slovak to appreciate the movie better:

(1) This is really a remarkable post Czechoslovakia, Czech and Slovak production.  It's clearly set in Slovakia.  The family in the film lives in a non-descript town in the Slovakian mountains. The currency used throughout the film is the Euro.  (Slovakia decided to go with the Euro a number of years ago, the Czechs perhaps with pretensions of "being like England" or even "becoming like Switzerland" have chosen to stay with the "Czech Crown."  This all makes for interesting conversation in both Czech and Slovak households in light of the current Euro crisis).   Still, while the movie was filmed in Slovakia, many of the actors are Czech and the film was apparently produced in both Czech and Slovak languages.  The version that I saw in Chicago was Czech.

(2) Since this movie was set in Slovakia, the Catholic Church does have a fairly significant presence in the film.  (Slovaks are some 90% Catholic, while the Czechs are about 60% Catholic and by reputation, especially in the cities, far less fervent...).  Eva is an organist at the local Catholic Church and when Eva's parents find out that she's had an affair with one of her teachers, they drag her to the priest where the irritated father (speaking perhaps for all irritated fathers everywhere) orders his daughter: "Tak spust se!" ('Okay now spill it ...!") to the dismay of the priest ... So much for the niceties of "private confession" apparently when one's teenage daughter is found acting badly ... Yet, we actually don't know what happens after Inrich orders his daughter to confess to the priest, and whatever would have been said, probably would have ended in private Confession.  Still we see an irate dad, demanding justice here from the Church against his daughter who's been misbehaving.

Would a scene like this play out in the (by reputation) "far more worldly" Czech Republic?  My guess is probably not in the cities.  But it is possible that in the countryside and in particular (at least by reputation) in rural Moravia (in the Eastern part of the Czech Republic, closest to, in fact, the border with Slovakia) the scene could well play out as well.

In any case, parents, whether practicing Catholics or secularists could probably relate to the scene and in the case of secular families, THEY MAY EVEN WISH THERE WAS A PRIEST OR PASTOR IN THEIR LIVES TO GO TO IN TIMES LIKE THESE.

(3) Americans may find the anger expressed between parents and children in the film (and even between the spouses) quite jarring.  I certainly found it jarring and I grew-up in a Czech home (if in the United States).  Perhaps to try to explain the rawness expressed (and not merely in the dialogue but also in the facial expressions) one could appeal to the basis of the conflict in the film:  Two sets of expectations, those of the father and of his two daughters, were utterly at odds.  The father was trying to be a good dad.  Yet he was utterly off-base with regard to what his daughters actually wanted.

As is typical perhaps of films in general (and actually of Czechs and Slovaks in particular), everything does get resolved in the end because no one really wanted to be so "right" as to irreversibly cause pain to the others (being Czech and having known and worked with Slovaks all my life, I do believe this to be a fundamental characteristic of both peoples -- these are two _small_ and fundamentally amiable peoples who don't want to be angry with another forever).  So it becomes inevitable that there would be a happy ending to this story.

Just how it all works out, I'm not going to say ... ;-)


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Dr. Seuss': The Lorax [2012]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-I)  Ted Zwecker (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Ted Zwecker's review

After decrying on this blog a year of surprisingly stupid, often arguably hate-filled and flagrantly politicized children's films on one side teaching kids that Hispanics (Hop), all people of color (Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2), all people with "foreign", that is, non-American/English accents (Hoodwinked 2) are bad to Evil and on the other side encouraging kids to mock a former American Vice-President (Dick Cheney er oil baron "Tex Richman" in The Muppets Movie) and a former President (G.W. Bush in the person of a "bumbling, out of touch Santa" in Arthur Christmas who in the story did, in fact, "leave one child behind...") one comes to  Dr. Seuss': The Lorax (directed by Chris Renaud and Kyle Bala, screenplay by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul based on the children's book by the same name by Dr. Seuss).

Even in its original children's book form, The Lorax, is a somber (not-particularly funny) and rather direct parable about the consequences greed and environmental destruction.  The Once-ler (voiced in the film by Ed Helms) sets-up shop outside of town among the "Truffula trees." He chops one of the trees down to harvest its "tuft" which was "softer than silk and had the sweet smell of fresh butterfly milk."  The tuft he processed into a product called a Thneed.  What's a Thneed?  Well it was something that people didn't even know that they "needed" but once created it became "a fine something that all people need."

Soon the Once-ler has a good business going.  He builds a factory, hiring all his cousins, uncles and aunts to work there. And though initially he tells the Lorax (voiced in the film by Danny DeVito), a short mustached creature that comes out of the stump of the first tree that he chopped down that he "just chopped down but one tree, I'm doing no harm," the Once-ler is soon chopping down Truffula trees on an industrial scale ... until there's nothing left of the forest, all its whimsical creatures are gone (even the Lorax), and even his former customers have gone-on to buying other things discovering that they didn't "need" those Thneeds after all.  

Obviously "there's a message" in this story.  But the next question ought to follow: Is it a bad one?  I don't think so, because what the story of The Lorax describes has happened already many times before:

(1) It is said that when the Pilgrims first landed at Plymouth Rock on the Atlantic Coast in Massachusetts in 1620, "a squirrel could hop from tree to tree from the Atlantic Coast (Plymouth Rock) all the way to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground."  That obviously is no longer true and the plundering and burning of often fantastically "old growth forests" for no good reason (other than that it can be done or even that "the trees are in the way") both in the United States and more recently around the world has certainly been well documented.

(2) Mountain-men and fur trappers did, in fact, decimate the beaver population in North America because the underside of the beaver pelt came to be used to make felt for "felt hats" (most famously the "top hats" that men wore in the nineteenth century).  But once there were no longer enough beavers to go around to make those stupid felt hats, fashion went on to "other things..."). 

(3) The wading birds of the Florida Everglades were also all but wiped out by the 19th century fashion of using the feathers from exotic birds to adorn, this time, women's hats.  Again, women who had happily lived without having feathers adorning their hats before this fad, have come to live without them again since the birds from which the feathers were extracted were all but wiped out...

(4) Thanks to such "environmental extremists" like John Muir, John James Audubon and perhaps most importantly U.S. President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, much of the remaining forests and wildlife regions of the United States were saved from imminent destruction by swift/decisive government fiat (often involving  summary Federal takeover) that would stun most Americans of a more right-wing persuasion today.  Yet, that the pristine stone face of Yosemite's El Capitan is not obscured today by waterslides, pawn shops, wax museums and wedding chapels like those cluttering the Wisconsin Dells, Lake George, NY, and the Niagara Falls or that there are any wading birds at all remaining in Florida and the other bayou regions of the South Eastern United States is the direct result of these men's convictions to preserve the remaining natural beauty of our nation for future generations.

(5) In the 1990s over-fishing by fishing fleets of various nations resulted in a crisis and even collapse of cod fisheries across the North Atlantic.  Demand had increased, the size and number of fishing vessels had increased but there were only so many fish to catch.  The collapse of a number of the fisheries in the North Atlantic has had a devastating impact on the fishing industry across the region even as, past consumers of those fish have moved-on to eat other things and other fish from other places ... 

So, yes, both the book and now the film "talk" of such stupid, unthinking environmental destruction driven by unconcern/negligence and an "it's okay simply because we can do it" mentality for the sake of products that we never really needed (and won't need after the resources required for their production are gone) in a manner that even a 3-5 year old could understand.  But honestly, as one from a religious tradition that tells us to live modestly and with concern for others, I don't see that as bad ...

Finally, there are a number of plot differences between the book and the film that those who knew the book would quickly recognize.  First of all, there are many other characters added to the film that weren't present in the original children's book.  But these changes allow the book to be translated better into a film:

In the original book, there really were only three major characters.  There was Once-ler, The Lorax and finally a boy who comes to the Once-Ler to ask what happened to all the trees.

In the film, the Once-ler and the Lorax obviously continue as characters.  The boy's given a name, Ted (voiced by Zac Efron).  Growing up in a spick-and-span if utterly artificial suburban-looking paradise called Sneedville, he starts to ask about what happened to "real trees" only after Audrey (voiced by Taylor Swift) a girl he's trying to impress tells him that she'd really, really like to see a "real tree" one day.  Ted gets help from his Grandma Norma (voiced by Betty White) who still remembers trees and tells him how to find the Once-ler who lives someways "outside of town."

To get "outside of town" proves not altogether easy, because the cozy, suburban paradise turns out to be ringed and isolated from the larger (and far less idyllic world) by something of a wall a la The Truman Show [1998].  Indeed, Ted, gets himself into trouble with the "powers that be," notably "bottled air" magnate Mr. O'Hare (voiced by Rob Riggle) when he tries to get outside the cozy confines of Sneedville.

After recounting his sad story and that of the Lorax to Ted, Once-Ler gives him the last seed of the last Truffula tree which Ted brings back for Audrey.  Much then ensues ...

The message however of both the book and the movie remain the same: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not."  That is, unless we come to care for the trees and all the whimsical animals living among them, they're all going to go away.  And while we may live in a "plastic paradise" for a while, we'll end up paying for even "bottled air."

Yes, this makes for a "political message" in the United States in our time.  But this message is one that I don't mind hearing said.  We do have to care ... And yes, I do think that this is the best animated children's movie to come out since its creators' previous film Despicable Me [2010].

ADDENDA:

Since at least the time of Pope John Paul II, the Catholic Church has been reflecting on the Environmental questions of our day and has offered a characteristically balanced approach to the issue.  While certainly not divinizing Nature, it has argued that respect for Nature (Creation) ought to be seen as a necessary expression of our respect for our/its Creator. (John Paul II, Peace with God our Creator, Peace with All Creation, message for the World Day of Peace, Jan 1, 1990). 

In this line, the Servite Order to which I belong has recently produced a lovely reflection on a Servite expression of this ethic called Cultivating Environmental Concerns with Our Lady.


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This Means War [2012]

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596350/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv020.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120215/REVIEWS/120219990

This Means War (directed by McG, screenplay written by Timothy Dowling and Simon Kinberg, story by Timothy Dowling and Marcus Gautesan) that was released for Valentines Day is a rather typical rom-com that outside of the context of that holiday or perhaps a need sometime to see/rent something both conventional / romantic isn't exactly a "must see."  But it's not an awful movie either.  Just really, really "pop corn" light ...  

Indeed, as is typical of most contemporary Hollywood rom-coms (that don't "go dark"), This Means War is a story of three beautiful people along with a number of similarly beautiful friends and acquaintances who surround them.  So there's a definitely "Wouldn't it be nice...", "Much Ado About Nothing", "All's Well that Ends Well," daydream quality about the film that's been a staple of romantic comedies since at least the time of the "Bard of Statford upon Avon," that is William Shakespeare or since the "California bards" of the 1960s, the Beach Boys, were singing about cars, surfboards and "Two Girls for Every Boy ..."

Actually, the film is something of a play on this line from the Brian Wilson/Jan and Dean song "Surf City," where the boy to girl ratio is reversed in this film and one girl finds herself involved with two guys, who it turns out were actually friends.  Ah, the complexities of "young love ..."

So how do the protagonists in this story get into their predicament?  Lauren (played by Reese Witherspoon) a gorgeous if somewhat nerdy young woman moves across the country to be closer to her boyfriend, Jason (played by Clint Carlson), only to be dumped because apparently Jason didn't expect their LDR to last...  Grieving the loss of her relationship, spunky Lauren puts her energy into her job coordinating/interviewing "focus groups" trying-out various consumer gadgets that show-up on late night commercials.  It's not much of a job, but at least she gets to hit things, break thinks, whack things with a stick every so often ... and encourage others to do the same ;-).

Her married best friend, Trish (played by played by Chelsea Handler) becomes so concerned that Lauren just "get on with her life" that she creates an online profile for her on a dating service.  Initially, Lauren is aghast by the description that Trish wrote about her (Apparently Trish was somewhat bored with her own life and had been hoping to live a little, if vicariously, through her still single friend...). 'Turns out though, that among the replies that she gets is that of a good looking guy who works in a "travel agency" named Tuck (played by Tom Hardy).

Now Tuck's actually not "a travel agent" at all.  He works for the CIA with his much cooler, "far more at home in his job" partner and best friend FDR Foster (played by Chris Pine).  Indeed, that Tuck would pick his "cover story" to be that he's "a travel agent" is somewhat indicative of his own somewhat nerdy personality.  Even his ex-girl friend doesn't really believe he's a "travel agent" though she has no idea he's actually CIA either -- "You've got to be the most traveled 'travel agent' I've ever heard of."  But he can't tell her what he really does for a living ...

Anyway, the two, Lauren and Tuck, set-up a meet if not a date at some coffee shop.  Friend FDR decides to hang-out in a nearby video store during this meet to give Tuck an excuse to leave and someone to have a few beers with if things don't work out.  Things do work out, but ... after Lauren and Tuck split-off to go their separate ways, Lauren runs into FDR (and FDR doesn't know that Lauren was the girl that Tuck was meeting ...).  Much ensues ...

First with no guy (and pining still for her ex-guy) but now suddenly with two, Lauren the drop-dead gorgeous Hollywood fantasyland character that she is, does what Hollywood scriptwriters with drop-dead gorgeous fantasyland characters in their plots have them do: She decides that she's going to "break the tie" by "sleeping with both of them" and see which one she likes better.  I can't even think about that scenario without the Beach Boys song "Wouldn't it be nice ..." playing in my head ... And that's a pretty good indication that we're entering here into the "Great Land of  Beautiful People, no AIDS, no ..., no consequences ... with Unicorns floating about."  It makes for one heck of a day dream, but ... Ma (and Mother Church...) would be concerned ...

So there you have it.  All does end well for everyone (except perhaps for Jason, Lauren's ex, who perhaps discovers he shouldn't have dumped Lauren so casually ...). 

Again, This Means War, is not exactly Tolstoy, but understood to be "popcorn light" ... it's not exactly the Apocalypse either.  Just understand the film to be a "daydream" and perhaps remember that "nerdy people" can end-up being far more interesting than you think ...


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We Need to Talk About Kevin [2011]

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

IMDB listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1242460/
Roger Ebert's review -


We Need to Talk About Kevin (directed and screenplay co-written by Lynne Ramsay along with Rory Kinnear based on the novel by the same name by Lionel Shriver) is a fictional account of a mother's reflections on her teenage son's becoming the perpetrator of Columbine-style school massacre.  

In the book, it's clear that the mother, Eva (played in the movie by Tilda Swinton), had been ambivalent about having the child.  In the movie, her ambivalence is not as clear, but it's clear that she herself thought that she had her own problems.  In both cases, however, it's obvious to the reader/viewer that from pretty much the time that Kevin was a toddler something was very wrong with him.  He seems aloof, developmentally slow (starts talking fairly late, and certainly takes his time and fiercely resists getting potty trained), and he's mean.  Eva sees this but as is often the case the other parent/her husband, Franklin (played in the movie by John C. Reilly), does not.  A manipulator from almost before he could walk and certainly from before he could really talk, Kevin plays the two parents off against each other.  What a nightmare ...

And it doesn't get better.  As Kevin grows up (Kevin's played as a toddler by Rock Duer, as an 6-8 year old by Jasper Newell and as teenager by Ezra Miller), he hones his skills of playing-off his parents (and other adults) against each other, being mean to animals and to his developmentally normal little sister (played by Ashley Gerasimovich) but never quite mean enough to finally force the hands of his parents and the other adults in his life (mostly at school) to actually do something until one day he locks the student body of his high school in the gym with bicycle locks he bought over the internet (he told his parents that we was "going to make a killing with them (they think selling them) at school") and starts picking off his classmates, one after another, with a cross bow.

What went wrong?  Both in the book and in the film, Eva, in part, blames herself, in the book because she knew that she never really wanted to have children (Kevin) to begin with, in the movie because she knew that she wasn't altogether psychologically fit herself when she had him.  Did Kevin know from early on that she never really want him (the book)?  Did Kevin inherit her psychological troubles (the movie)?

To some extent the reader/viewer could ask whether that inner angst of the mother is really relevant (other than being melodramatic) here.  Perhaps better questions could be asked: What can society do to identify psychopathic youths before they do it harm?  Can a pattern of uncalled-for / gratuitous meanness become seen as a symptom worthy of flagging someone as a potential danger to oneself and society and worthy of progressively more attention/supervision by parents/teachers/law enforcement authorities?

Yes, psychopathy like other neurological conditions (autism comes to mind) would probably exist on a scale.  Still a consistently mean child, even for the sake of the child (to say nothing of the larger society), would deserve to be supervised/watched (and not just by the parents but by society, mostly at school) to make sure that others (innocents) don't end up being killed by that child as/when he or she grows up.


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Safe House [2012]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L) Michael Phillips (2 1/2 Stars) Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Michael Phillips review

Safe House (directed by Daniel Espinosa, written by David Guggenheim) is a post-9/11 post-Bourne Identity spy thriller (hence with the fundamental theme of "who can you trust?") that aside from being set in Cape Town and then the countryside of South Africa, doesn't really add anything particularly new to the genre.

Still, like a dream/nightmare that repeats itself until it dissipates or gets resolved, these kind of spy thriller paranoid action films like this seem to "work" today.  Safe House has a 70% audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes website and three weeks out, it's still in the top 5 at the box office and it's grossed some $97 million. 

So what's the film specifically about?  Matt Weston (played by Ryan Reynolds) is a rookie/tenderfoot CIA operative with a rather boring "doing one's dues" initial assignment: He's the "manager" of a "team of one" (apparently just himself) project: maintaining a CIA safe house in Cape Town, South Africa, should the need ever arise that it'd be needed.  In other words, he's the "groundskeeper" of one of those "undisclosed locations" / "secret prisons" made famous (or infamous) during the G.W. Bush Administration.

It's pretty boring work.  Six months into the assignment, he's had no "house-guests," and about all he has to show for his time in Cape Town is that he's found a French girlfriend, Ana Moreau (played by Nora Arnezeder), who he can't be honest with about what he really does for a living.  All he can do is be "vague" about his work and promise her that his "work" may take him to Paris "one day."  She likes that promise but it's pretty clear that he doesn't have a chance at getting that kind of an assignment since Paris would probably be a rather prestigious CIA posting.  And what has Weston been doing?  He's been playing "cleaning lady" / "maintanence man" in a "stainless steel basement" of an outwardly utterly nondescript-looking building in Cape Town that inside/underground opens up to a compound filled with jail cells and interrogation rooms and all sorts of wild electronic gear.  But the compound NEVER, EVER GETS USED because NOTHING EVER "HAPPENS" IN SOUTH AFRICA ANYMORE.

So Matt spends his time listening to "French language tapes" and trying to get his former mentor David Barlow (played by Brendan Gleesan) stationed at CIA headquarters in Langley to get him the hell out of this spick-and-span but half mothballed dump in Cape Town and on to Paris.  But Barlow has no reason to promote Weston because HE HASN'T DONE ANYTHING to justify promotion.  Life can suck ...

Well be careful what you wish for ... One day, a rogue former CIA agent, Tobin Frost (played by Denzel Washington), walks-up to the gate of the U.S. Consulate in Cape Town, and to everyone's -- Matt's, Barlow's and Matt's immediate superior (but still way out in Langley) Catherine Linklater's (played by Vera Farmiga) -- surprise Matt's gonna get an actual "house guest."  Why?  Well, Frost had been supposedly one of the CIA's top agents, and then 10 years ago he suddenly "walked off the reservation," sold all kinds of secrets to all kinds of people, often enemies and potential enemies of the United States. Yet NOW for some reason, he "waltzed back" to the U.S. Consulate in Cape Town apparently asking for the U.S. government's assistance.  The obvious question reverberating among the good folks in the U.S. spy/diplomatic community is WHY?  Why the heck would he come back?  And given his past selling of U.S. secrets left and right to all kinds of people, the folks at the CIA are "mighty angry about it."

So when the CIA's "team" comes to Matt's stainless steel basement safe house with Frost in chains and a hood they're not particularly interested in being "nice" to Frost.  Yes, they want answers, eventually, but they also want payback.  So they bring out the water and the towels, and it becomes "water boarding time."  But while the interrogation team is "not yet torturing" ("approaching the line of torturing") Frost, a second team comes in and shoots-up the place, killing everybody but Matt and Frost, who manage to get away.

The quick thinking, CIA veteran turned fugitive Frost had convinced the rookie Matt Weston that it "would look really bad" (presumably on his next performance evaluation) if Weston's "house guest" turned-out to be killed.  So Weston gets Frost out of the building (at least still in handcuffs...) and, rookie that he is, "calls Langley for directions ..."

Much ensues and eventually we get an explanation for "what the heck just happened" and indeed why someone like Frost would have "gone rogue" and arguably betrayed his country after doing so. 

There will be folks who will not like the explanation.  But anyone who knows a little about the power of keeping things secret would certainly suspect that this power could be used to cover-up all sorts of things, many of which would have very little to do with actual "national security ..."

Anyway, there's not necessarily anything new in this film, except perhaps the rather comical portrayal of the quite boring life of a spy-agency "safe house" operator.  (In the film, Frost and Weston make their way to another CIA "safe house," this one out in the South African countryside that makes Weston's old gig "in the city" positively thrilling ...).

Still, we live in a world now of  "secret prisons" in "undisclosed locations" and super-trained, super-compartmentalized special forces units trained to perform missions (and do them on faith...) that we can only imagine.  Add then the temptation to sin, that is to use all that secrecy and power for less than virtuous ends ... and well ... that combination offers a plenty of fodder for a lot of films just like this.


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84th Academy Awards (2012) - Hooray for Nostalgia!?

IMDb listing
Previous/Other years


Billy Crystal Rules!  Say what one wants, he delivers.  From the very first sequence where he passes through a montage of scenes from last year's top pictures, most nominated, some like Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible 4, not, he was a hit, in great form and carried this through a great show.

Hollywood's surprising conservatism that I commented on in my review of the last year's Academy Awards, came through again.  Martin Scorsese's 3D wonder Hugo came into the Awards show a favorite to win the top awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best (Adapted) Screenplay and Best Cinematography.  Yet it walked away with only technical awards as well as Cinematography (arguably "technical" in this case as well).

In contrast, the darling of the Oscar's this year was the well deserving film The Artist, a technically perfect nostalgic look back on Hollywood's Silent Screen era.  The picture won Best Picture, Best Director (Michel Hazanavicius) and Best Actor (Jean Dujardin).

And Nostalgia arguably factored in pretty much all of the other prestigious awards:

Christopher Plummer won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Beginners.  He was certainly excellent, won on merit.  But it also felt like a "lifetime achievement award" as well.  Plummer is 82, only 2 years younger than the Oscars themselves.

Octavia Spenser won Best Supporting Actress for her role in a film that was arguably anachronistic.  It was said about The Help when the came out this past summer that while the topic itself was nice, it was yet another story written by a white woman about race relations in the South.  Yes, this worked well in the 1930s with the celebrated Oscar winning screen adapation of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind and even in the early 1960s with the similarly celebrated Oscar winning screen adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mocking Bird.  But this is 2011/12.  Yes, Octavia Spenser, African American, was the only one who won an Oscar for The Help, a screen adaptation of the book by the same name written by Kathryn Strocket.  But the Association of Black Women Historians rightly asked last summer how long will it take before a story written by a black woman about race relations in the South will get such Oscar buzz?

Meryl Streep, universally acknowledged as the best actress of our time and possibly of all time, won her third Oscar after being nominated and then snubbed 14 other times (Yes, she's been nominated for the Academy Awards 17 times) because, yes, she's the greatest but also because she played here the role of the towering (and now aging...) British figure of the late 20th Century, Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Nostalgia is written all over this award...

Finally Woody Allen received the award for Best Original Screenplay for his film Midnight in Paris which was precisely about an American screenwriter of today (played in the film by Owen Wilson) nostagically looking back at Paris of the 1920s. 

I suppose that story-telling is always going to be largely based on nostalgia (And at its base that's what Hollywood does -- tell/sell stories).  And, it's not easy (and certainly would be limiting) to come up with compelling stories about about times, places and people who haven't existed yet.

Still I do find it fascinating that there was such an uproar last year over the Oscars' young hosts (Anne Hatheway and James Franco).  And then there was an almost counter-revolution in the Oscar balloting last year when a story about a dead stuttering English King (The King's Speech) won all the major awards, vanquishing the modern retelling True Grit (whose star was no longer the venerable John Wayne but a spunky young actress named Hailee Steinfeld playing a teenager) and the ultra-cutting edge films like The Social Network and Inseption.

This year, the Oscars' counter revolution was complete with the "resurrection" of Billy Crystal as host, something that to Crystal's and the show's producers' credit the show's initial sequence joked about.  And one must admit that Crystal was good!

Further to Meryl Streep's and Woody Allen's credits, both have become quite famous for working with and mentoring new talent.  Anne Hatheway (The Devil Wears Prada), Amy Adams (Doubt, Julie and Julia), and Amanda Seyfried (Mamma Mia!) have all gotten to work with and learn from Meryl Streep.  And the list of young actors and actresses that Woody Allen has worked with over the past decades is simply too long to list here but they have included Mira Sorvino, Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johannson, Javier Berdem, Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, et al, et al.

So even though the same names often do pop-up over and over again, there are folks like Streep and Allen (and I do suspect Crystal) who do seek to "share the wealth" (or at least share their knowledge).  And any young person picked to host the Oscars in coming years ought to view both last year's and this year's shows and seek to learn from them.  And until then, I return to saying Billy Crystal simply rules The Oscars.  There's simply no one in these last 20 years who's been as good as he's been in hosting the show.


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