The Avengers [2012]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert's review

The Avengers (screenplay and directed by Joss Whedon with contributions to the story by Zak Penn) based on the Marvel Comics Avengers comic books by Stan Lee [IMDb] and Jack Kirby [IMDb] is a film that Marvel Studios have been patiently building-up for years.  As the closing credits rolled for each of the Iron Man movies [2008][2010], Thor [2011] and Captain America: The First Avenger [2011], there was Nick Fury [IMDb] (played by Samuel L. Jackson) quietly talking to the key characters of these films and/or introducing new ones, quietly assembling "the team" for SHIELD (the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) a needless to say "super-secret" agency created to defend the country, and indeed the world, from the truly ultimate bad-guys.

Did the film live up to expectations?  I would say yes (!) and indeed beyond.  Consider simply that these are American comic-book characters, one of whom is even called Captain America [IMDb] (played here as in the 2011 film by Chris Evans)  Yet this film has proven wildly successful (and deservingly so) across the globe.  Some fairly random opinion from around the world -- Russia [Kinonews.ru - ENG-GoogleTrans], Brazil [cenasdecinema.com, ENG-GoogleTrans], France [leblogducinema.com - ENG-GoogleTrans], Germany [critic.de - ENG-GoogleTrans], Australia [thepopcornjunkie.com], India [indiatimes.com].  Indeed, the India Times website even featured a video imagining a Bollywood Avengers film ;-).

So one is very much tempted to just bow down and say "All Hail Marvel!" because they have always known how to produce compelling characters and package their products very, very well.  How do they do it?  Well we can't enter into their boardrooms, but honestly if I were teaching a course on Carl Jung and Archetypes, I would make Marvel Comics mandatory reading and viewing.  (I've been a fan of C.G. Jung since my Novitiate and was actually quite disappointed in the recent film A Dangerous Method [2011] which was about the circumstances of the parting of ways of the Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.  A better program, IMHO, on Carl Jung -- about his "Red Book" -- recently aired on CBC's Ideas radio-program that gets rebroadcast here in Chicago late-night WBEZ our local NPR radio station.  Another excellent article about Carl Jung's "Red book" could be found in a 2009 article in New York Times Magazine around the time when the book, which had been his personal diary was first published).

Why Carl Jung / Archetypes?  Well, according to Jung, characters that we encounter art, literature, yes, films that "speak to us" do so because express deeper realities (Archetypes) present in our psyches.  (According to Jung, it's pointless to "fight God" because God is present to us in our psyches as an Archetype.  He's already there in our heads whether we like it or not.  So we might as well make peace with God.   Indeed to Jung the key to psychological balance/peace was to make peace with the various Archetypes that exist there.  Among them would in fact be God.  Others would include "the Shadow" (that which we're trying desperately not to be) and "the Animus/Anima" (for a man, our feminine voice, for a woman a masculine one).  

Why does the Scarlet Johannson character in this film, Natasha Romanova/The Black Widow (or the Kate Bekinsale character Selene in the Underworld series) work so well?  They are feminine (tending toward the "anima" in men) and invariably dressed in black (shadowy).  Further, Natasha is Russian (former adversary of an American viewer) and Selene is a vampire (again someone potentially dangerous who necessarily "lives in the shadows.")  And yet, "let out to play," they are AWESOME to watch.  They trick (Natasha) and take down enemies (both Natasha and Selene) arguably better than we can.  Then consider who are the ones that mostly read comic books or play "shoot-em video games"?  Young men.  So Natasha and Selene represent the young-men's "animas" being "let out to play."  (Another example of this kind of character, though perhaps more problematic, was the "Babydoll" character from Sucker Punch [2011]).  In all these cases, these are attractive women, dressed invariably in black who just beat the daylights out of bad guys.  And yes, watching them do this ... really, really cool ;-).  [And it may be, in fact, an invitation to young men to let the women in their lives be free, because in their freedom they become our allies and do things that we can't.  And it also may be an invitation also young women to embrace their "inner action hero" (animus) as well].

Consider then The Hulk [IMDb] (played here by Mark Ruffalo).  Bruce Banner tries desperately to keep his anger under control, but every so often he explodes into a raging green monster (the Hulk).  That "shadow" side of him isn't necessarily Evil though it is very destructive (in good part probably because Bruce tries so hard to keep it pent up...).

Now if Jung would maintain that Archetypes like God, the Shadow, Animus/Anima are more or less Universal, other archetypes are more fungible.  Here the interactions in this film between Captain America [IMDb] (played by Chris Evans) representing America of the 1940s (remember, due to an accident at the end of WW II, he was literally "frozen in time" until he was discovered and thawed into our's time at the end of 2011 Captain America movie) and Tony Stark [IMDb] (played by Robert Downey Jr) representing (for better or worse) the popular American ideal today is fascinating!

Add then to the mix are two Norse Gods (portrayed here as powerful beings from another world), brothers, Thor [IMDb] (played by Chris Hemsworth) and Loki [IMDb] (played by Tom Hiddleston), perhaps intentionally invoked to represent God-like or at least Demi-God-like opposites (Thor being good and Loki being Evil).  Interestingly enough, the Captain America character has no trouble at all understanding them to be exactly what Marvel Comics wants them to be understood -- not actual Gods but "powerful beings" from "another world."  Being introduced to Loki as "a God," he responds "In my day, there was only One God and they [both Thor and Loki] are definitely not it!"  (Again, in Jung's thinking there is a true God Archetype.  Thor and Loki can be interesting and very powerful characters but they're not God.  On the other side of the equation, with Jung's insistence on balance, he would consider himself a dualist, insisting that "God's Shadow" would have to be as powerful as God).

So then, having introduced the movie's main characters, what finally is the plot of this film?   After Thor had been cast down to earth as punishment by his father Odin in Thor [2011] he left behind a 1000 cm3 gelatinous cube of untold power.  SHIELD had gotten a hold of it and was studying it.  Loki wanted it back to use it for his own reasons.  And yes, as twice the "second son" (younger than Thor and adopted...) Loki craved power and wanted to subjugate Earth in the process.  So he comes down to Earth to try to steal the cube back.  Much ensues and yes the world hangs in a balance.  Will this group of "super-hero" Avengers quietly assembled by SHIELD be able to defeat Loki and his minions and prove to the Universe that humanity is now ready to both defend itself from alien attack and even step-up and take its rightful place in the Cosmos?

To be honest, I've come to dislike most alien invasion movies.  But I do believe that this one was quite well done.  And it involves such a complex interplay of Jungian Archetypes that I just found it fascinating to watch ;-).

How's the violence?  Again, Marvel plays it smart.  Yes, there are a lot of explosions, especially at the end, and a lot of glass is broken.  But there's little blood and no gore.  As such, yes, I believe it earns its PG-13 rating.  So I do think that this is another _excellent_ comic-book superhero film in a long line of excellent comic-book superhero films made by Marvel Comics over the years!  Good job!


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Marley [2012]

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

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review



Marley (directed by Kevin Macdonald) is an excellent documentary on the life behind the music of famed Jamaican reggae musician Bob Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981).


I admit that while I never was a fanatic about reggae music, I always did find it sympathetic and as a young adult in the 1980s, Bob Marley. already deceased by then, was something of a "cultural icon."  No I didn't necessarily want to emulate him and the reggae scene's perceived drug use.  On the other hand, how could one NOT like / admire songs like Bob Marley and the Wailers' "One Love" [YouTube].

Reggae entered into my life again (if only briefly) as a curiosity when I was serving as Associate Pastor at St. Catherine of Siena parish a heavily Caribbean and mostly Caribbean Hispanic parish in Kissimmee, FL in central Florida.  There I had been called one time to talk to a teenager who no longer wanted to go to Mass.  Her parents, immigrants from one of the Andean countries of South America were still struggling terribly with English but their 15 year old daughter, of course, already spoke fluently and with only a slight accent.  Anyway, she was the one who no longer wanted to come to Mass.  And when I asked her why, she responded: "Because they don't play my kind of music."  We had actually awesome ensembles for our Spanish and even Haitian Masses.  So surprised, I asked, "What kind of music do you like?"  She responded, "Christian reggae," to which I had to laugh, thinking immediately of some of the older retirees going to our English Masses.  Still, our music director there was excellent and we did have a substantial number of teens like this 15 year old who may have come from Spanish speaking immigrant households but already preferred English and yes had different tastes, needs and yes worldviews than their parents.  So for a couple of years afterwards "One day we'll have Christian reggae" became something of a "Next Year in Jerusalem" challenge between me and the music director, and yes, over time we did find some lighter, more Caribbean sounding liturgical music (that wouldn't scare away the older folk) to play at the English Masses there as well.

Then much more recently, this spring, I happened to come across and then see another excellent documentary called The First Rasta [2010] about Leonard Howell, the founder of the Rastafarian movement, that was playing at the Facets' Multimedia Theater here in Chicago.  That proved to be a very interesting/enlightening experience as previously, while I did find Rastafaris often rather sympathetic, really I knew next to nothing next to nothing about them except for their (to my _white_ eyes) rather strange if characteristic dress and again their reputation for marijuana use.  Learning that the Rastafaris came to worship the King of Ethiopia as their (black) messiah immediately explained a number of things to me including the characteristic colors of Rastafarian dress (they are the traditional colors of the Ethiopian flag), as well as both the Biblical allusions and generally _happy_ sound of Rastafarian inspired reggae both movements coming from Jamaica.  (For those who would not immediately make the connection, the Ethiopian monarchy had traditionally linked itself to the Davidic line through King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.  So it would not be impossible to imagine a Messiah who was a "son of David" to be born into the Ethiopian royal family...).

All this is to say that upon learning that this documentary, now about Bob Marley, was going play, this time at the Music Box Theater in Chicago, I certainly was immediately interested in going to see it.

What then to say about the film and its portrayal of Bob Marley?  First, I would say that Kevin Macdonald's portrayal of Bob Marley was far more interesting to me than say Oliver Stone's portrayal of famed-rocker from the 1960s (who also died at an early age) Jim Morrison in The Doors [1991].  The two films were obviously different in style, Stone's being a "historical drama" while Macdonald's being a true documentary.  Still one would say that Stone's Jim Morrison came across as basically a white "navy brat" who from the time he entered into (and flunked out of) UCLA's film school to his death was essentially in a drug induced free-fall during which he occasionally wrote lyrics and played concerts.  Yes, Morrison was the "bungie jumper" (without a chord?) of his generation trying to "Break On Through (to the Other Side)" and all that, but fundamentally Morrison was a slob.  In contrast IMHO, Macdonald told a far more compelling story about Marley, no doubt in good part because Marley's was a compelling story.

For instance, Rastafarian, with dreadlocks and all, Bob Marley was actually half-white and half-black.  His father was white from a British colonial family that had settled in Jamaica.  Marley's mother came from a poor black family living in the Jamaican hinterlands where Bob's father had found her and, yes, got her pregnant.  Most of those interviewed in the documentary who knew Bob Marley from his childhood noted how hard it was for him to grow-up a "half caste" in a largely black community in the countryside.  At twelve, he and his mother's family moved to the notorious Trenchtown section of Kingston, Jamaica.  His life there was not easy.  One of his fellow band members noted that there were times growing-up that Bob knew hunger ("You filled your stomach with water before you went to sleep...").  Trenchtown eventually became the birthplace of various Jamaican music sounds including rocksteady and reggae.

Among other things that I learned about Marley and the Wailers was that when they first toured in the United States, since most of the members (including Marley) were Rastafarians, they had a real problems playing State-side "raggae clubs" which they found immoral.  Yes, Rastafarians have a reputation (by outsiders) of smoking (huge amounts of) marijuana.  But apparently that reputation is not fair and if Rastafarians do smoke marijuana (or even a lot of it), they do so with a religious view and DON'T see their smoking marijuana as justification for going on to use/abuse other drugs.  The band members' perceptions of the immorality going on in the clubs that they were playing the United States were enough of a problem for them that a number of the band members actually left the band rather than continue to participate in their tour.  I found that fascinating!

I also found fascinating that Bob Marley along with most of his band were life-long avid soccer players, indeed soccer fanatics.  Once again, this does not necessarily square with the "heavy on the pot" image that Marley was often associated with.  Indeed, it was as a result of a soccer injury (a stubbed toe that refused to heal) that Marley discovered that he had cancer -- melanoma -- which eventually resulted in his early death. 

All in all, I found the documentary to be fascinating and Marley to be a true artist and cultural force in his time.  When he had made it, his house was "two blocks from the President's and three blocks from the Prime Minister's in Jamaica" according to one of the people interviewed in the documentary and "his house was certainly the cultural center of Jamaica at the time. Everybody who was anybody was going there to talk about music, history, politics, and yes, play soccer ..." ;-).  What a guy! ;-)


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We have a Pope (orig. Habemus Papam) [2011]

MPAA (not rated)  CNS/USCCB (L) Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars with the below explanation)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert's review

We have a Pope (orig. Habemus Papam) is an Italian language/English subtitled film directed by Nanni Morretti who also co-wrote the film along with Francisco Piccolo and Federica Pontremoli and costarred in the film (as the psychologist brought into to the story's mix as it played out).  The film serves as reminder to all that a film about the Church is not easy to make.

And I would suggest to readers here, to please make a gut-check for yourselves before proceeding further: If a film (even one which is basically a comedy) about the election of a Pope, where the election does go (somewhat hilariously, if as it progresses ever more poignantly) awry would make you concerned/queasy, then please don't read any further further here and don't see the film.  Almost certainly, this film will not be for you.

So why go see / review (and more or less positively) a film that one knows will be difficult for many viewers to bear?  Well, not surprisingly, for various not necessarily straight forward but hopefully poignant reasons.

Above all, I would wish that Americans, both Catholic and non, those who love the Church and those who frankly hate it, would come to see the movie FOR ITS ITALIAN-NESS.  I studied in the seminary for three years at my Order's international college in Rome where the primary language of both community life and instruction was Italian.  So I do think I know something of what I am talking about here, as I experienced it myself.  (And don't get me wrong, some in the Catholic Church in Italy would have their own objections to the movie and Italy famously has its own, err, how should one say this ... lively / "energetic" Press ;-).  However, my point here is this movie portrays the Catholic Church in a _very different way_ than what many Americans would be used to.  And to be blunt about it, the Catholic Church is portrayed in this film as neither Triumphant nor Evil (which seems to me to be the only allowed positions in American discourse with regards to the Catholic Church these days).  The Cardinals, ALL OF THEM, are portrayed in this film as likable, largely "grandfather" figures (and therefore worthy of respect _wisdom figures_) who the faithful (fedeli) wish well ("vogliono bene..."  Indeed, the most heartfelt way in Italian to say to someone "I love you" is to say "Te voglio bene" (which actually translates more closely to "I wish/want you well.").

So this film portrays the relationship between Cardinals and the people in this SWEET, POIGNANT, ITALIAN way: There are no murders, no conspiracies, no fighting, _even between the cardinals themselves_.  In the film, after the previous Pope died, (clearly using footage from the funeral of Pope John Paul II), the funeral was portrayed SOLEMNLY, (again POIGNANTLY), KINDLY -- a great man, the leader of the Chruch, il Papa, died.  And the people, the faithful, "the rest of the family", the Church, is authentically _sad_.

The drama and yes comedy of this film comes, of course, after the previous Pope's funeral when the College of Cardinals locks itself up behind the doors of the Sistine Chapel to elect the new Pope.  And there something very strange (and again, something IMHO very Italian) starts to happen: It becomes clear to the viewers that NONE of the perceived frontrunners for the Pope want the job.  They're all heard praying (and in their respective languages): "Oh, Lord, please not me." 

I suspect that most Americans would find this, at best, silly.  It would probably be inconceivable to most Americans today that someone who's worked his way up all the way to be Cardinal would NOT want to become Pope, especially if the position dropped into his lap.  However, I do think that this thought, while still somewhat silly (though not nearly as silly to the point of inconceivable in the United States), does appear to exist out there in the "collective unconscious" in Italy.

I say this because when I was studying in Italy in the 1990s, I saw another film incidentally also written and directed by Nanni Morretti called La Messa 'e Finita [1985] (meaning "The Mass is Finished" recalling the words said by the priest at the end of the Mass, continuing, of course with "Now go out and love and serve the Lord" [in the previous American-English Missal], "go out and proclaim the Gospel" [in the more recently approved one]).  In that film, a young and still relatively recently ordained priest announces to his parish that he's leaving the priesthood with the rest of the film explaining why.  And it becomes rather obvious.  He was getting virtually no emotional support from anybody: not from his family, not from his former friends, not from his parishioners.  All were quite busy in their own lives, often making horrible mistakes with those lives, but were too busy doing this... to care about him (or really anyone else outside of their own little worlds, contracting to their own little selves).  So after a couple of years of this, the priest leaves (and again by the end of the film, no viewer would be surprised...).

The current film, We have a Pope (orig. Habemus Papam), takes a similar tack.  The leading Cardinals, knowing the enormous problems facing the Church all beg God not to select them.  Their prayers are answered, and after a number of days, a completely different Cardinal is elected Pope.  But the newly elected Pope (played by Michel Piccoli) doesn't really want the job either.  So after the other Cardinals all congratulate him, and he's vested as the new Pope and they all come to the balcony on top of St. Peter's facing St. Peter's square to announce "Habemus Papam (we have a Pope)," the new Pope has a panic attack, and prior to the public seeing him, flees down the stairs and locks himself up in the private quarters of the Vatican.

What to do now?  Well that's the rest of the movie ... Yes, it's all embarrassing.  And _mercifully_ the only media coverage portrayed in the film is that of the generally kind/supportive Italian media, which while certainly enjoying scandals, nevertheless doesn't subscribe to the "go for the jugular"/"shoot all prisoners" approach characteristic of our divided American media today.  The general line of the "Italian media" portrayed is that while truly grinning from ear-to-ear (and beyond) saying to itself "Wow!  Has the Vatican gotten itself into an unbelievable mess!" and continuing then to ask whoever could be found to ask, "Come-on guys, tell us who did the Cardinals pick ...?" but then explaining, "We're only asking this because we just want to give the big guy a big hug ... corraggio (lit. "courage/take heart") ... 'cause we well know it must be crushingly awful to be Pope these days!" ;-)

The Cardinals bring in an eminent psychologist (played by the film's director Nanni Moretti).  They want him to psychoanalyze him right in front of them.  The initial conversation the psychologist has with the cardinals, about 50 of them, right in front of the scared/depressed newly elected Pope about what questions are "in bounds" (almost nothing) and "out of bounds" (almost everything) is priceless.  But the Cardinals are not being cruel.  They're family, they want him to get better, but clearly don't seem to have a clue that this can't possibly work.  The Pope's spokesman / interim secretary (played by Jerzy Stuhr) tries to get the Pope (who no one has yet seen as Pope) a little more privacy by making him an appointment with another psychologist (played by Margherita Buy) outside the confines of the Vatican.  But of course, the new Pope (still no one knows that he's the new Pope) takes the opportunity to ditch his handlers.  And now there's a somewhat confused, and certainly anxious older man, who in any other profession would long since be retired wandering the streets of Rome (HOW CAN ONE NOT FEEL SORRY FOR HIM?)  He also happens to be the new Pope, but no one knows that and the folks in the Vatican would JUST DIE if this got out.  Much more ensues ...

I admit, I don't like the ending.  Yet, if you've read this far, you'd probably understand its logic.   The film, from beginning to end asks the honest question:  Even if you believe and perhaps ESPECIALLY IF YOU BELIEVE ... would you really want that job?

To this end, I'd say that this is a brave movie.  It's a very Italian movie.  And as disconcerting perhaps as the movie is, I'm glad that Moretti, et al made it.  God bless you and vi voglio bene, Italia!  Vi voglio bene!


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The Raven [2012]

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

IMDb listing-
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1486192/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv051.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120425/REVIEWS/120429996

The Raven (directed by James McTeigue, screenplay by Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare) is a film that will probably be disliked by a lot of people.

First, the writer Edgar Allen Poe [IMDb 1][2] (played by John Cusack) tended to write in a dark, macabre style.  And to be honest, I never was much of a "goth" enthusiast.  Yes, I don't mind if it's intended to be funny (like the Addams' Family, both the television series [1964-66] and the movies [1991] [1993], or The Munsters [1964] or Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" [1974].  If one pushed me, something like Anthony Hopkins' and Benecio del Toro's Wolfman [2010].  But I don't particularly like the genre.

Then one gets to the writers of "Gothic fiction," I have to say that I've gotten to the point that I detest the "darker" early American writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne and, yes, Edgar Allen Poe.  And to be honest, I've come to blame it on largely _colorless_ when not outright dark/gloomy milieu that the came from 18th-18th century American Protestantism.  It may be a strange choice, but honestly give me at least the color of the Borgias over the darkness and gloom of the Salem Witch Trials.   All this is to say, if you're someone like me, who just doesn't like "Gothic" stuff, then already this movie has a strike against it.

Second, the movie here is a work of (to be kind...) "speculative fiction."  To be less kind, it approaches Edgar Allen Poe in the same way that Dan Brown approached The Vatican in Angels and Demons (book [2000], film [2009]) and Jesus / Mary Magdalene in The Da Vinci Code (book [2003], film [2006]): The premise for The Raven is set right at the beginning of the film with a caption on the screen declaring: "The last 4 days off Edgar Allen Poe's life remain shrowded in mystery."  We then see a notoriously drunk Poe sitting delirious on a park bench in Baltimore shortly before his death.

Va bene.  What follows is basically Edgar Allen Poe meets Dan's Brown's Angels and Demons [2006] crossed with Se7en [1995] where Poe is conscripted by Baltimore police led by Detective Fields (played by Luke Evans) to help them stop a serial killer who's using Edgar Allen Poe's own stories as his modus operandi.  The movie eventually involves a love interest of Poe's (played by Alice Eve) and her father (played by Brendan Gleesan).  It all spins into a fairly engaging story.  But it does require one to buy-into that initial premise that Edgar Allen Poe didn't simply (and far more probably) just drink himself to death.... 

Yes, it's all rather "creative."  Again the film follows an approach reminiscent of Dan Brown and/or perhaps the National Treasure films [2004][2007] starring Nicholas Cage.  There's also been a recent trend to spruce up "dusty classics" with the macabre, like Pride, Prejudice and Zombies coyly attributed to "by Emily Dickenson AND Seth Grahame-Smith."  To this end, I'm actually looking forward to the film coming out this summer called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer [2012].  But I'm looking forward to that movie precisely because I know for certain that it will be wildly exaggerated nonsense.  The Raven remains at "the far edge of plausible," and that does bother me more, and I suspect will be a deal breaker to many viewers as it has been to many critics.

So The Raven appears to mate the dreariest sections of High School American Lit class (again, I really didn't/don't like Nathaniel Hawthorne or Edgar Allen Poe) with an implausible Dan Brownian plot.  As I began my review, this film is certainly "not for everybody" ....


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The Five-Year Engagement [2012]

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1195478/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv052.htm
Michael Philips' review -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-mov-0424-five-year-engagement-20120426,0,5506041.column

The Five-Year Engagement (directed and cowritten by Nicholas Stoller along with Jason Segal who also costarred in the film along with Emily Blunt) chronicles in a comedic but often quite realistic way the bane of a more than a few parents and grandparents to say nothing of their religious leaders.

Exactly a year after aspiring chef Tom Solomon (played by Jason Segal) and English born but studying in the states psychology grad-student Violet Barnes (played by Emily Blunt) met at a San Francisco Bay Area "Come as your own Superhero" themed New Years Party, Tom proposes to Violet.  She says yes!  

At a somewhat stodgy "engagement party" sometime afterwards, we meet the rest of the families / friends.  Tom's parents, Pete and Carol Solomon (played by David Paymer and Mimi Kennedy respectively) are Jewish.  Violet's parents, Silvia Dickerson-Barnes and George Barnes (played by Jacki Weaver and Jim Piddock respectively) are Anglican and divorced.   Violet's father has since remarried to a striking woman (but with no lines) of Violet's age.  Tom also has a often stupid co-worker / best friend named Alex (played by Chris Pratt) and Violet is close to her younger sister Suzie (played by Alison Brie).  Among the things that happen early in this story (that spans five years) is that Alex ends up knocking-up Suzie at the Tom and Violet's engagement party and thus because they "have to get married" the two get married even before Tom and Violet were going to get married to begin with, that's if all things had gone "as planned." But of course, things don't go "as planned."


Soon after the engagement party, Violet finishing grad school, finds out that she was rejected for the post-doc program that she had applied to at U.C. Berkeley.  Accepting that, she puts her energies into planning Tom and her wedding.  Then she and Tom find out about Alex and Suzie and thus they too were now (scrambling) to get married.  And obviously, though it shouldn't matter, both Tom and Violet are taken aback that even though Alex and Suzie were doing everything in a heavily improvised fashion (Suzie was like 6-7 months pregnant in her wedding dress, etc) their wedding went actually quite nicely.  So no pressure on Tom and Violet ... (Alex and Suzie remain an improvisational counter-example to Violet's and Tom's far more "let's get everything perfect before..." approach throughout the the movie).

A short time afterwards, Violet finds out that by a fluke she got accepted into the post-doc program at the University of Michigan.  After talking about it, Tom and Violet _postpone_ their wedding but decide to move out to Michigan (Tom quitting his promising job in San Francisco) so that Violet could do her post-doc work in Ann Arbor.

The story really begins at this point, and clearly much ensues, including among other things, the one-by-one deaths of every single one of Violet's grandparents, while the couple never seems to get married.

What happened?  This is something that I actually know something about from my own grad-school / academic days, and it is also something that comes out relatively prominently in the FOCCUS inventory that the Catholic Church uses in its marriage prep program for young couples: Has the couple really discussed and come to agreement regarding each one's career aspirations and, yes, each one's expectations of the other in their roles as husband and wife?  This film was ultimately about two talented and ambitious people, Tom and Violet, who really needed to choose between career and their relationship and had trouble accepting that their decisions whatever they were had real consequences.

Indeed, that FOCCUS inventory that we give marriage couples was all but made for a couple like Tom and Violet, a couple that only knew each other for a year before they got engaged and really did have conflicting career/life aspirations. 

How does the film turn out?  I'm not going to tell you ...

But it turns out from my own experience at the parish where I work that most couples that do come to us to get married already know each other "forever" and have been "basically engaged" for years (and yes come often enough with small kids already in tow).

Why does it seem to take so long?  Well, those questions about life, career and marriage expectations do take time to sort out.  So yes, there's generally a huge difference between how a couple that's known each other for 10 years and been engaged for 2-3 scores on the FOCCUS inventory and a couple like Tom and Violet who met simply at a "Come as your own Superhero" party the year before.  It appears to take a while for a couple to achieve those "super powers" :-)

So what then to make of the movie in the end?  I do think that the film could make for a very good discussion piece for young adults.  It is also a reminder to young adults to not get particularly involved with someone if one isn't really "settled."  And yes, it is a warning about being too ambitious in pursuing a career.  There are always relational costs to pursuing "glory" ...

And yes parents, this film is appropriately rated R.  The film, even by its subject matter, is not intended for teens.  It is intended for young adults and above.


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Pirates! Band of Misfits [2012]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  Nell Minow (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1430626/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv050.htm
Nell Minow's review -
http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/movies/12115855-421/comedy-comes-fast-and-furious-in-pirates.html

Pirates! Band of Misfits (directed by Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt, screenplay by Gideon DeFoe [IMDb] based his own book Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists the first of a series that he had written in the style of the famous British comedy franchises of Monty Python [IMDb] and Douglas Adams [IMDb]) is a silly enough animated film using clay figurines in the style of the directors' previous run-away success Chicken Run [2000] to entertain both the young and old.

Set in the 1830s in Victorian Era, Gideon DeFoe [IMDb] and the others involved in the project, take liberties with poking a lot of fun at Queen Victoria [IMDb] (voice by Imelda Staunton) herself, as well as of all people, Charles Darwin [IMDb] (voice by David Tennant).  The latter, the hapless/anti-heroic Pirate Captain (voice by Hugh Grant) and his similarly hapless/anti-heroic crew encounter when they attack his famous ship, the HMS Beagle, in hopes of finding booty, only to find the bookish Darwin, a lot of strange exotic animals and one "rather angry baboon" (you'll have to see the movie to find out why ... ;-).  The baboon aside from being "rather angry" turns out to not be all important to the story..., but the Pirate Captain's "big boned parrot" does.  Much ensues ...

As a teenager I loved most of Monty Python [IMDb] especially Monty Python and the Holy Grail [1975], Jabberwacky [1977] and Monty Python's Meaning of Life [1983].  As a college student, I read most of Douglas Adams [IMDb] Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, and liked the original BBC Hitchhikers' Guide [1981] television series (the subsequent Hitchhiker's Guide movie [2005] not so much).  More recently, I've actually enjoyed the Robert Downy Jr "reboot" movies regarding Sherlock Holmes [2009][2011].  Growing-up in a Czechoslovakian immigrant household, I also enjoyed the various stories about the fictitious Czech folk-hero/"academic" Jara Cimrman who also "lived" in that same era.  (I mention Cimrman because the scene in this movie where Darwin/the Pirate Captain present the Pirate Captain's parrot to the "august" gathering of scientists/academics of the Royal Society is something that any Czech Cimrman fan could appreciate ;-).

All this being true, and my betraying a more or less obvious predisposition to love a movie like this, the one thing that I didn't like about this film is its portrayal of Queen Victoria [IMDb] which I found over-the-top mean.

True, not a great many Irish-folk would have a lot of nice things to say about Victoria as the Great Potato Famine took place under her reign and the British monarchy did next to nothing.  I would imagine that the Indians/Pakistanis would probably not have many nice things to say about her time either as she presided over the height of the British Empire and took the title, among others of Empress of India.  Further, while the Victorian Era was noted for both its prudishness and hypocrisy. It has been said that even as "proper Englishmen didn't do such things" there were more prostitutes in London during the Victorian Era than at any other in London's history.  Obviously, there was a demand ...

Still true as all of this may have been, her era was one of a great flowering of both Sciences (again, Charles Darwin [IMDb], et al) and the Arts (Charles Dickens [IMDb-1][2], Oscar Wilde [IMDb-1][2], et al).  So I found the portrayal of the Queen in this film needlessly mean.

What to tell parents?  Like many "kids' movies" made these days, the movie has as much for adults as for kids.  Yes, the pirates are goofy enough to entertain the little ones, and yes there are enough allusions to historical people and events to both entertain the parents, and give them things to talk about with the kids afterwards.  Is it a spectacular movie?  No.  But it's not a bad one.

And all things considered, with the exception with going to town on beating up the Queen, it's better than a large number of nominally "kids' movies" released last year that had far more obvious (and unfunny) ideological axes to grind.  So if you haven't gone to the movies with the kids in a while, this would not be a bad one to go to ... Otherwise, you could wait for it to come out on video.

Finally, once again, with regards to 3D -- I saw the movie in 2D and it was just fine.  There's no reason to spend the extra $3-4/kid to see it in 3D.


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Chimpanzee [2012]

MPAA (G)  CNS/USCCB (A-I)  Roger Moore (3 stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1222815/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv047.htm
Roger Moore's review -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-mov-0417-chimpanzee-20120419,0,3134250.story

Chimpanzee (directed by Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, narrated by Tim Allen) is a child-oriented (Disney-Nature) documentary about a baby chimpanzee named "Oscar" by the film makers growing-up with his group of Chimpanzees in the wilds of the canopy  tropical rainforest in Africa.

Note to parents: Despite the documentary's relatively short length (78 minutes) and generally "child friendly" tone, it still may be too long for the attention spans of a lot of small children.  This is where zoos actually can be better than these kind of programs -- when the kids get bored of the "chimps" you can head over to the "polar bears" or "penguins." ;-), whereas here, you're pretty much committed to the 78 minutes ... ;-).

Having said that, the nature photography is beautiful.  A night time scene with the green phosphorescent mushrooms seemed almost straight out of Avatar [2009].  Viewers learn a little about Chimpanzee social structure: The group into which Oscar was born was headed by an Alpha-Chimp that the film-makers named "Freddie."  He had some younger male chimps that would one day become his rivals.  And there were a number of females with their young (including Oscar, the youngest) making-up the rest of the clan.  The clan's territory was centered around a grove of nut trees which the chimps were shown routinely breaking with stones (tool use).  Sometimes though, they would venture in other directions for for food, like to a group of tropical fruit/berry trees, but those appeared part of neighboring group of chimpanzees' territory (a group led by a chimp that the film-makers called "Scar").

So there would be occasional battles between these two groups of chimps over control of these two groves of trees -- the nut trees that seemed to be in the center of Freddie/Oscars group's territory and the fruit/berry trees that seemed to be at minimum in disputed territory or in the territory of Scar's group of chimps.  As a result of one of these battles between the two groups of chimps, Oscar's mother is wounded (and is presumably finished-off later by some other ever-opportunistic animals like leopards).  Who would take care of Oscar now?  Well a surprising "foster parent chimp"steps-up to do the job providing an example of altruism that researchers have come to note with regards to the behavior of chimps.

All in all, it seemed to be a very enjoyable documentary, though perhaps more for the parents than for really young kids. 

ADDENDUM:

I'd also add, that this kind of research, in the wild, in the natural habitat of chimpanzees is probably preferable to the kind done in cages / laboratories at universities other research centers.  One thinks of the documentary released last year named Project Nim [2011] about a chimpanzee raised among humans and taught how to communicate with humans using sign language.  All seemed fine until Nim started approaching maturity (4 years of age) and became simply too strong to be casually around humans.  What to do then with a chimp too strong to be around us and yet not really knowing how to relate to other chimps much less survive in the wild?  The research done simply observing chimps (and other animals) in their natural habitat seems like a better way to go at least with regards to the chimps / other animals themselves.


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