Resident Evil: Retribution [2012]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review

Resident Evil: Retribution (written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson) continues a highly profitable film-series based first person shooter video-game franchise also going by the name of Resident Evil.

Films series based on toys (the Transformers franchise), Disneyland attractions (the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise) other video games (e.g. Prince of Persia [2010]) or in the reverse, video-games based on successful film franchises like Star Wars are common-place today.  They can irritate purists but they are certainly inevitable and (of course...) when done well the different media can work together to increase the enjoyment of a particular storyline and _perhaps_ even serve an educational purpose.  For instance, I would absolutely love to see Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris [2010] be turned into some kind of "Time tourism" role playing game.

The first person shooter aspect of the Resident Evil franchise is certainly the most troubling aspect of this genre of games / films.  In a first person shooter video game, players are expected to shoot all kinds of assorted bad guys or creatures as they proceed through the game.  Games such as this _always_ provide "good reason" for the players to shoot the bad guys because, well ... they're always "really bad guys."

In the case of the Resident Evil franchise, the "really bad guys" are generally zombified humans (there are also clones as well as assorted "lab created mutants").  The humans were zombified on account of being infected by a "T-virus" produced by an Evil Corporation called "the Umbrella Group." The virus had been designed by the "Umbrella Corporation" to serve a biological weapon. Of course the T-virus "escaped" into the general population turning infected people into human flesh craving zombies.  And if it's "kill or be killed ..."

So teens and other assorted young people from Chicago to Kentucky to California to New York to Alaska to Moscow to Tehran to Saudi to Manchester to Bulgaria to Kinchasa Zaire to Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo, Beijing and Manila are happily shooting (and almost certainly splattering) zombified humans _in the video game_ as a result of this "really Evil scenario" presented to them.  And there are dozens of other games with all kinds of other scenarios from the arguably "historical" (Call of Duty) to the completely fanciful (World of Warcraft) out there.

Is this good?  A game like this probably isn't going to make a great many of its players more moral/upstanding people, though it may make them more skeptical of politicians, "really big corporations" and the like.  And that need not be bad.

Is it entertaining?  Given the enormous success of these games, it appears to be.

Is this harmful?  I'll go out on a limb here and say that _probably_ not.  There are voluntary ratings to these games.  Yes, they are probably even less followed than movie ratings, BUT THEY EXIST.  And between parents and _the kids themselves_ I'm positive that they more or less work.  If the intensity of the game is too much, the reaction to the game _even by the kid him/herself_ generally would be "Hey, you know what, I don't like this game.  Let's play something else that won't make me so scared."  So parents PLEASE RESPECT THE RATINGS.  IF A GAME IS MARKED "M" _please_ trust that it REALLY ISN'T FOR YOUR 8-10 year old (but for AN ADULT).  If it's marked T-14 (for Teens over 14) respect that as well.  But please don't treat these games like they're the Apocalypse because they are not.  AND ARGUABLY the most _non-violent_ video game out there -- a simple flight simulator -- produced the inspiration to the 9/11 attacks.  I know that in college in the 1980s after about 1/2 hour of "flying around" in my fake/virtual aircraft and becoming bored with it, I myself began looking for bridges to fly under and yes buildings and mountains to crash into.  And honestly, even a stick or a rock applied in a particular way can become a lethal weapon.

Alright, to the movie itself.  To be honest, it would seem to me that except for being a promotional vehicle for a new add-on or new generation of the video game, the video-game would be more entertaining than the film.

This is because the premise of the whole "Resident Evil" scenario in a few sentences:  The Evil and all but Omnipotent "Umbrella" Corporation has accidentally unleashed a virus that turns infected humans into flesh eating zombies.  The giant artificially intelligent computer responsible for security at the secret underground facility called "the Hive" where this virus was developed (for biological warfare purposes) first tries to cover its tracks by trying to kill all the humans infected by the virus.  Then still trying to cover its tracks, it tries to use the virus to kill-off the human race completely.  (This is one messed up "artificially intelligent" super-computer ;-)

Among the humans infected by the virus only a very few, like the film's chief protagonist Alice (played by Milla Jovovich), proves immune to the virus.  As such Alice becomes a special enemy of this paranoid and arguably psychotic yet "artificially intelligent" computer whose 3D holographic projection that it uses to communicate with humans is called "the Red Queen" (played by a cute little girl named Megan Charpentier and voiced by Ave Merson-O'Brian).

Alice tries to rally the world's remaining humans to fight off the virus infected zombies (and eventually the computer responsible for infecting them) while the childish "Red Queen" super-computer does all in its cibernetically connected power to wreak havoc and infect as many human beings as possible with the virus.

Much of the current film takes place in "a Soviet Era underground complex in Kamchatka" that was bought by "The Umbrella Corporation" to conduct its biological warfare tests.  This complex is so huge (and the Corporation so Evil...) that within it are Truman Show [1998]-like mockups of  downtown New York, Tokyo, Moscow and "Suburbia."  These mockups were built to allow "The Umbrella Corporation" to film the effects of its virus on "residents" living there and to present then these films to the enemies of these places in order to impress them into buying stocks of the virus for themselves.  The pitch presumably was to be: "See what this virus would do to people living in Moscow, New York, Tokyo, etc ..."

How does one perform such simulations realistically?  Being "Evil", the "Umbrella Corporation" decides on using "clones."  Indeed in one of the _really cool scenes_ in the movie (one of its horrors), Alice finds herself in a part of this Evil underground facility where she finds an entire assembly-line of other "Alices" being made presumably to use "for study" / "destruction" in one or another of the modules in the lab.  Is Alice herself therefore a clone?  Hmmm... ;-)

Anyway, Alice along with several others including a cloned child who believes Alice to be her mother seek to fight their way out of the facility and up to the surface to "rejoin the remaining uninfected/immune humans" in fighting off the plague of infected zombified flesh-eating humans and _perhaps_ even finally defeating this strangely childish if really, really powerful and paranoid "Red Queen" super-computer  Will they succeed?  Well see the movie or buy the game ...

Is this a particularly "deep movie" / video game?  No.  But I do think that in describing it here, the reader would appreciate its appeal.

Parents, the film is definitely not for little kids.  But for teens? especially with some supervision?  If you yourselves could stand it, I'd probably say yes. ;-)


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Arbitrage [2012]

MPAA (R)  Roger Ebert (4 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1764183/
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120912/REVIEWS/120919997

Arbitrage (written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki) is about a fictional Wall Street financier named Robert Miller (played by Richard Gere) who's had a lot on his mind.  He's been trying to sell his company, quickly, before the feds discover a $400 million hole in its books.  He's got a beautiful wife of his same age named Ellen (played by Susan Sarandon), a beautiful daughter named Brooke (played by Brit Marling) in her late 20s or early 30s who both loves/worships him and now works for him as his company's CFO.  And, of course, he has a mistress, Julie Cote (played by Laetitia Casta) who's younger than his wife / older than his daughter, somewhat and  perhaps necessarily insecure, who's a transplant from Paris and who he's been both helping and "helping" set up an art gallery in New York.

Miller's a classic "A-personality" top-dog Wall Street honcho.  Yes, he's been "juggling a lot of balls in the air" and for sometime.  Yes, he has that $400 million deficit in his books that's been weighing him down.  Maintaining both a family and mistress has not been easy -- near the beginning of the film, it's "poor Robert's" birthday and we see him finding a way of celebrating his birthday with _both_ his loving/adoring family _and_ (separately) with his mistress (kinda exhausting ...) -- but he's been managing to pull it off.  If he could just get the buyers of his firm _to sign_.  But being big egoed, "A-personality" Wall Street honchos themselves and perhaps sensing that Miller seems uncharacteristically anxious to get their deal done, they make it a point of "taking the air out of the ball" and "taking their time ..."

It's in this situation that Miller makes a mistake.  Tied-up by representatives of the firm that he's been negotiating with to buy his firm, he finds himself terribly late to a "gallery showing" that his mistress was holding.  Feeling guilty (or perhaps simply feeling that he might lose the mistress) after arriving so late to her event, he promises her that right after the event finishes he'd take her, right then and there, away for a couple of days to "someplace nice" in upstate New York / New England.  Excited, and besides the event was winding down, she chases the remaining few guests, mostly friends, out of the gallery so that she and Robert can head-off on their "lost day or two."  BUT ... it's been a _really long day_ and as has been clear, Robert's been burning the candle at both ends.  SO ... somewhere along the way (it's the middle of the night...) he doses off at the wheel and flips the car after crashing it into an embankment along the side of the road.  Having been wearing a seat-belt, he himself suffered no major injury BUT ... his mistress having been sleeping leaned against his side apparently was thrown around in the car during the accident... and as a result was KILLED INSTANTLY.

What now?  The rest of the story becomes Bernie Madoff meets Ted Kennedy/Chappaquiddick meets Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment meets Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors [1989].  Realizing that his life is over if he stays at the scene of the accident, Miller leaves the scene, calls, using a pay-phone the son of a loyal and recently deceased employee of his (the son of this former employee is played by Nate Parker) and has this person drive him back home to the city.  The next day he talks to his lawyer who tries to pursuade him to turn himself into the police telling him that "all" could "still be explained" but with each hour, and certainly with each day, things would get much worse for him.  HOWEVER, Robert has got to sell that company and is afraid that the publicity from this new accident/scandal would cause the buyers to really dig in their heels and perhaps even walk away from their deal completely and THEN he'd be dead financially for having mismanaged his firm.  So he CAN'T go to the Police right away ...

But the police, of course, soon come to him.  It was MILLER'S CAR that crashed on the road after all.  And there was a dead body in it.  So Detective Michael Bryer (played by Tim Roth) and his partner Detective Mills (played by Curtiss Cook) soon come calling asking pointed questions.  The rest of the movie becomes, of course, "Can he (Miller) get away with it ...?" and then, what about all the other things, "can he get away with those as well ...?"

A number of critics have noted their unease over watching this movie in which the viewer is arguably manipulated into at least partly "sympathizing with a lout" (and worse ... sympathizing with a criminal, well groomed and wealthy though he may be).  At least one critic noted that a film like this would not have been possible under the pre-1960s "Production Code" (which had been championed by the Catholic Church in the United States) under which a film's resolution had to be absolutely clear that "crime does not pay" and Good always ultimately triumphs over Evil.

Yet this is not the only film, both recent and not so recent, that has been pointedly ambiguous in this regard.  One simply thinks of Oliver Stone's recent film Savages [2012], where viewers are asked to sympathize with "the struggles" of three aggressively hedonistic American "boutique/'medical' marijuana growers" fighting off a "hostile takeover" by a Mexican drug cartel.  (I found it amusing that even the Mexican thugs in the film expressed their own disgust with the American trio's quite literally "all for one and _one_ for all" lifestyle calling them at one point "savages").  Then there was the documentary about the real estate mogul David Siegel and his wife called Queen of Versailles [2012] where, granted Siegel didn't _murder_ anyone but his whole fortune was built on getting relatively simple people to buy "time share" property that they really didn't need and couldn't really afford.  Finally, there have been famously morally ambiguous films about "blue collar" protagonist/criminals like Robert DeNiro's character in Taxi Driver [1976].

So yes, while I understand the moral discomfort while watching a film like this, it's actually nothing new.  And I would add that some of the "sympathy for the Devil" in the person of Robert Miller that we may feel may be the result of our realization that we do, even if grudgingly, appreciate his predicament.  Often, we too, "juggle many balls in the air," and find ourselves at times in situations ON ACCOUNT OF BAD CHOICES (often SINS) that we honestly never expected.  So even if we don't particularly _like_ him (and at times _hate_ him) we can grudgingly _understand_ him. 

Hopefully then the film is of some value helping us to (1) to appreciate how we can _all_ find ourselves "over our heads" when we _choose_ to walk off the right path (when we choose to sin), (2) to appreciate that our sins more or less inevitably come to effect others and (3) to have at least some compassion towards those who do Fall.  Most of us will never be as rich as Miller.  But we can appreciate how he got into the Hell that he that he found himself in.

A final question: What of the us the "little people" who often end up being crushed by the mistakes of the "titans" like Miller?  Don't we deserve some compassion as well?


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The Cold Light of Day [2012]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  Fr. Dennis (2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review

On first impression, I found The Cold Light of Day (directed by Mabrouk El Mechri written by Scott Wiper and John Petro) to be something of a "confused" movie.  Its cast includes a number of "A-list" actors.  Yet it seems to me that the film can be best understood as being intended to be a "B" class "Noirish" (paranoid) spy-thriller.  I've long appreciated that "B" films do have their consolations, notably that "B" films often can touch on topics that higher caliber "A" films wouldn't dare. Indeed, the famed "Noir" films of the 1940s-50s generally centered around some unspeakable secret that would only be revealed "in the final reel," and this secret would explain to the audience the increasingly strange, desperate and paranoid behavior of the characters surrounding the main protagonist(s) in the story.

It would seem to me that this was exactly the intent of the present film, even if the result is then somewhat jarring.   It doesn't surprise me that this film hasn't exactly received critical acclaim either in Europe where it was first released or in the United States since its release here [IMDb] [RT] or that it hasn't done particularly well in the box office.  If one is honest, the "Noir" films 1940s-50s didn't do particularly well either.  By their nature, these films are "dark" and conspiratorial.   

So what's the film about?  At the beginning of the film, the story's central protagonist Will (played by Henry Cavill) -- 30-something, unattached, and with plenty of worries at work (he apparently runs a small business consulting firm centered in San Francisco, that's _not_ doing very well) -- arrives in Spain to join his parents played by Bruce Willis and Caroline Goodall) and his younger brother Josh (played by Rafi Gavron) and Josh's fiancee Dara (played by Emma Hamilton) on a vacation, which if it had been up to him, he probably would have passed on.  Sure the "vacation" was promising to be "really, really nice" (the family was renting a small yacht and was planning to lazily sail along the coast of Spain) but his mind was obviously "elsewhere."

His absent-mindedness actually does result in him being responsible for a minor accident on the boat on the first day of the trip.  So when the family anchors in a small inlet along the coast at the end of the day, he offers to swim to shore to buy some basic first aid materials to more properly bandage up a not altogether insignificant gash that he was responsible for on his brother's fiancee's forehead that resulted when a boom that he had not secured properly had crashed into her noggen.   He jumps off the boat with a small plastic pouch, swims to the village onshore, buys the bandages.  But when he comes back to the shore, is surprised to find that the boat had moved in the time that he was buying the bandages.  No matter, he climbs a small hill, spots the boat, not altogether that far away.  But when he swims out to the boat, he finds that it is empty.  What happened?  Where's the rest of his family?

He swims back to shore, goes to the nearest police station, and with some trouble (he doesn't speak Spanish and only some of the local police officers speak some English) explains that he wants to report the disappearance of his family.  A few police officers with a squad car go out with him to investigate.  But when they get to the shore, the police's reaction becomes somewhat strange.  Observing that the boat listing offshore with apparently no one in it their first instinct becomes to try to arrest Will.  Why??  I'm not entirely certain.  However even in the United States in recent years, whenever a "family tragedy" is reported, police tend to consider as the first suspects (now called "people of interest") to be the surviving family members themselves.   

As the local cops move to restrain and arrest him, Will's father emerges from the brush and rescues him.  Then stealing cops' squad car, they drive away.  As the two drive with the stolen police car back to Madrid (probably not too realistic... it's a long drive and one would expect that the local police would have reported their vehicle stolen to other authorities in the meantime), Will's father explains to will that there had been a "bit more" to his work than he had led on previously.  He had not been merely a "Cultural Attache" for the U.S. State Department at various embassies during the course of his career.  Instead ... he had actually always been CIA.  Wow.

Now "some fairly powerful interests" from whom (as part of his job) Will's father had "taken something" wanted that "something" back.  These "powerful interests" were now holding the rest of the family hostage.  "Did mom know what you were actually doing for a living?"  "Of course she did son.  Not all the details but she knew." "Why didn't you tell me or my brother?"  "To protect you.  It was always better that you knew less than more."

When the two return to Madrid, Will's father makes contact with his long-time partner (played by Sigourney Weaver) to find out what happened with the briefcase.  Much ensues, much of it not particularly flattering to either the CIA or (later) the Israeli Intelligence Agency Mossad.

Why would that be?  Why would much of the rest of the film not be particularly flattering to the CIA / Mossad.  Well, the movie becomes about the problems of operating any clandestine agency.  Much of the work of such an agency is done necessarily "in secret."  Therefore maintaining accountability is very, very hard.  The temptations to "go rogue," "do side jobs," even outright steal and cover-up one's petty and not so petty crimes with the cloak of "national security" must be great.

So I would imagine that many American viewers as well as generally pro-Israeli viewers would probably squirm through much of the latter part of the film even as we would grudgingly admit that these kind of things probably even almost certainly do go on.  Welcome to the world of classic Film Noir ...

Now how is the presentation of the story?  As I've mentioned above, it's rather choppy.  A case could be made that one would expect "something more professional" from a movie with Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver in it.  Yet, the choppiness of the film again evokes the Film Noir tradition where the vast majority of these films made no pretenses of being anything more than "B" movies where everything _didn't_ necessarily flow well.  What's always been most important in a classic film of this type was not the film's production quality but the "unspeakable secret" being revealed near the end.  And indeed, a film's very "choppiness" can actually _accentuate_ the unnerviness surrounding the "unspeakable secret" being first played around and then finally revealed.

One particular thing that I believe that the film did do quite well is to show indeed glory in the bewilderment that Will and later a young Spanish woman named Lucia (played by Veronica Echegui) who he meets along the way experience as they try to figure out what is going on.  Yes, there are both auto and "roof top" chase scenes in this film, but it's clear that both Will and Lucia are "amateurs" in these things.  (They get off the rooftops safely but ... ;-) ... how they do it, isn't exactly pretty ;-).   I found the portrayals of quite "ordinary people," Will and Lucia, in extra-ordinary circumstances quite endearing. 

So it's hard for me to be enormously rough on this movie.  Yes, The Cold Light of Day is _not_ an "A film."  But by all indications, it would seem to me that its makers intended it to be a "B film" of the Film Noir tradition.  And in that I do think that it more or less succeeds.


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Samsara [2012]

MPAA (PG-13)  Roger Ebert (4 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review

Samsara (directed and cowritten by Ron Fricke along with Mark Madigson) is a sweeping guided meditation made in the same style which characterized their two previous collaborations, Baraka [1992] and Chronos [1985].  Each film was organized around a broad world-religious theme: Chronos, of course, comes from the Greek word for Time,  Baraka comes from the the Arabic/Semitic word for "Blessing," and Samsara from the Sanskrit word for "Continuous Flow" or "Impermanence" and in the Buddhist conception (when one stands opposed to it) the fundamental cause of all Suffering. 

Just as in the previous two films, there is no dialogue in the film, just 90 minutes of sweeping land, city and indoorscapes (in the case of Samsara taken over the course of 5 years and across some 25 countries) all taken with 70 mm film and HD digital video with minimal but intentionally included/added background music and sound.  Like its two predecessors, much of Samsara is filmed using time-lapse photography allowing viewers to experience familiar events from an unfamiliar (arguably "God's-eye" or perhaps in Eastern religious language "Kharmic") perspective.

The overall effect of the film simultaneously awe-inspiring and ego-deflating:

The film begins with a sequence performed by a troupe of traditional dancers from East Asia, Malaysia I believe, that is so intricate and precise that it becomes hard to tell whether it's being performed people, by life-sized traditionally clad (and somehow manipulated) dolls, or at least by people wearing masks.  The film ends with another dance, this time by an Indian troupe, which though performed by young women nonetheless is so intricate and sublime that in its hand movements it transports the viewer arguably into the realm of the Divine. 

The initial dance sequence is followed by a scene from nature showing a lava stream from an active volcano heading inexorably toward an ever explosive encounter with the sea, reminding us that the Earth itself is not static.

Afterwards, a group of Tibetan monks are shown painstakingly constructing a marvelously intricate sand drawing made of different colors of sand.  Near the end of the film, having completed the intricate sand drawing and having had time to contemplate its serene beauty for a short while, the same monks proceed to destroy it by wiping the drawing clean with calm sweeps of their hands, the same hands with which they had made it.  Adjoining the two scenes of the monks first constructing and the destroying their intricate sand drawing are two scenes capturing sand blowing across the trackless dunes of the Gobi Desert which lies north of Tibet.

However after this initial reflection on nature coming from the Eastern Religions of Buddhism and Hinduism, much of the middle part of the film shows a darker side to this cycle of constant flux and change:

Factory workers dressed in orange and yellow jump-suits arriving at a factory somewhere in East Asia are shown through time-lapse photography to look like insects arriving "home" at their hive.  Then the motions of these individual workers on the factory lines, experienced again through time-lapse photography, is shown to be all but indistinguishable from the motions of commonly associated with assembly-line robots.

The full product cycle of our consumer product driven life-style is presented from those lines of brightly colored uniformed factory workers busily assembling the products that we would one day use, to discarded products from automobiles to computers being both picked apart (by other sets of power-tool wielding "busy bee" factory workers) or otherwise being mechanically crushed and shredded.

We are presented with the eminently hygienic and "clean" but mechanically-driven modern food cycle. Turkeys are shown being fed by spinning brush wielding machines to the orifices of giant vacuum driven clear plastic pipes that "suck" the turkeys out of their giant holding pens to other parts of the "plant," and presumably eventually to their butchers. Cows, pigs and chickens are shown being moved/prodded around by machines in similar ways. (Honestly I could not help but think of the facilities being shown as being basically a "kinder, gentler," more "hygienic" Auschwitz for animals).

At the other end of the food cycle we were shown a scene a large number of poor Filipino adults and children (as well as birds ...) picking through the scraps of recently dumped garbage arriving at a gigantic dump presumably outside of Manila by large (human-driven, mechanical) dump trucks.  

A sequence continuing this "descent into Hell" is presented, showing the both the growing (?) and traditional (?) co-modification of sex in the East from a scene showing a factory making increasingly life-like anthropomorphical sex dolls, to smiling living bikini clad dancers at an upscale sex club wearing numbered tags looped around their g-strings (presumably to allow prospective clients the ease of "ordering them by number") to finally showing a traditionally made-up/clad Japanese geisha girl walking, alone, either to or from work one evening.

A final sequence follows the mechanical production of guns and bullets and the casualties resulting from them.

But it is not all dark.  Away from the hustle and bustle of life where man and machine seem to intersect and meld into one, are those Tibetan monks serenely first making and serenely destroying those sand pictures that they make.

Also present are stunning scenes of the multitudes of pilgrims processing around in tight circle around the Qaaba rock in Mecca.  When seen again through time-lapse photography the meandering procession around the Qaaba begins to look "alive" and indeed like a churning whirlpool.

Finally, near the end of this film on flux and change, there's a powerful shot of the inside of Saint Peter's Basilica, where the only movement shown is that of the rays of sunlight passing through the windows and the giant inscribed name PETRVS stands utterly, indeed defiantly, fixed on the giant stone/marble seemingly immovable vaulted ceiling of the Basilica built over St. Peter's tomb.  As perhaps a counter point, near the close the film is also a shot of the venerable Pyramids of Giza taken from the rooftop of a nearby recently constructed high rise tenement building representing the urban sprawl that is slowly encroaching on the site of the Pyramids all the way from Cairo. Even the majesty/awesomeness of the Egyptian Pyramids stand soon to marginalized ...

So religion is portrayed as a solace and a means of coping with the inexorable forces of change and the suffering that it causes, but a difference is also drawn between the Eastern and Western religions.  In the Eastern religions, especially in Buddhism, NOTHING is considered permanent.  In the West, be it in Islam, in Christianity (and here primarily in Catholic Christianity) and in some strands of Judaism (where either Jerusalem or the Torah are seen as immovable/constant), SOMETHING, generally ONE thing is believed to remain immovable against the otherwise overwhelming currents of change even as all the Western faiths freely admit that _most things_ are "vanity" (Eccl 1:2) and "There is a time for all things" (Eccl 3:1).

But then this _one_ (and arguably rather _small_) difference between the East and the West completes then this multifacted reflection on the concept of Samsara -- Eternal Flux and the Suffering that it causes. And the result is truly one heck of a thought provoking film!  My hat off to Ron Fricke and Mark Madigson, the makers of this film, great, great job!


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The Words [2012]

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

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1840417/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/12mv104.htm
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120905/REVIEWS/120909996

The Words (cowritten and codirected by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal) is a film that I honestly bought into hook, line and sinker, leaving the theater thinking that I had just seen one of the best movies of the year (both in terms of writing/direction and even in terms of some of the performances) only to find that it was trashed by an awful lot of critics, getting an very impressive (in an infamous sort of way) 17% from critics on the RottenTomatoes website's "TomatoMeter" (even though the audience score was much more favorable).  The young adult oriented AV Club even gave the film a D- (!!) even as it gave "Casa de Mi Padre" certainly one of the worst American-made movie of the year a "B."  So honestly critics, "why the hate?" Or are there a lot of guilty consciences out there? ;-)

Okay, my last comment is something of a cheap shot, but I honestly don't understand why the critical community would have trouble with either the multi-level structure of the story here or, for that matter, its (IMHO more or less obvious) ending.

How many levels of story/action were in Inception [2010] that received almost universal critical acclaim (though perhaps mostly for its special effects ...)?  And did anybody out there read a _good translation_ of the Thousand and One Nights?  One of the true joys and marvels of reading the 1001 Nights is in keeping track of the levels of storytelling that take place there.  Sure on the first level, there's the story of Scheherazade telling a series of night-time stories to her unstable and insanely jealous husband to keep him focused (on her stories) and thus keep her alive.  But many of her stories were about people (merchants, sailors, yes, at times thieves...) who _also_ found themselves in situations that they had to tell powerful, despotic people (sultans, kings, judges, commanders) stories that would entertain those people, calm them down and keep the (metaphorically) "tap dancing" storytellers alive.  I think there was one time that I counted four levels of story-telling in one section of the 1001 Nights.  So that this film, The Words, would have three levels of storytelling taking place is something that I found joyfully entertaining.

Then perhaps in my line of work, I do see a world that's more complex than cartoons.  Should an adulterer, for instance, tell his/her spouse that he/she cheated?  Why?  To whose benefit?  It's been my experience that many (most? I'd have no idea...) adulterers eventually confess their adultery to their spouses not for the benefit of their spouse but _for their own benefit_: "I cheated on you <fill in the blank as to how many years ago>.  Now by telling you, at minimum, I'm rocking _your world_.  You won't be able to trust me (or anybody) for a _long_ time.  But boy am I relieved ... In fact, I'm so relieved that I'm going to go out for a beer."   Honestly, where's the justice in that?  And yes, the obvious counsel to all is DON'T CHEAT TO BEGIN WITH.  But once you're there, make sure that your motivations for "coming clean" are themselves clean.  And the way to Redemption may be to LEAD AN HONORABLE LIFE FROM HENCEFORTH and to BE MERCIFUL to those who find their sins outed in one way or another, knowing quite well, that it could easily have been you.  Jesus did not say to the people: "Whack the adultress and then sin no more."  Instead he told her accusers "Whoever hasn't sinned cast the first stone" and THEN to the adultress "Go and sin no more..." (John 8:1-11).  Honestly folks, that's a path in which "everybody lives." 

Anyway, those two great musings come to play in this film that was roundly trashed...

The movie is structured -- in three layers.  It begins with a famed fictional writer, Clay Hammond (played by Dennis Quaid) addressing a filled auditorium of adulating writing majors at (presumably) Columbia University in New York City, reading two extended excerpts from his latest book.

Hammond's book is about a young writer named Rory Jansen (played by Bradley Cooper).  In the first excerpt, Rory is struggling.  He's worked on a novel for three years, borrowed (repeatedly and to increasing embarrassment) money from his dad (played by J.K. Simmons), sent his novel to all kinds of publishing houses and received basically the same rejection letter back each time: "Yours is a good, introspective book.  But no one is going to publish it, being by an author who doesn't have a name (isn't already well known)."  Dad finally tells his son, "Look, you have a girlfriend, Dora (played by Zoe Saldana).  You're going to want to get married.  And you can't get married until you have some money.  Son, please get a job."

Rory listens to his father and gets a job -- at the bottom rung of a New York publishing house, still kinda thinking "I'll make connections."  He marries Dora.  They go to Paris on their honeymoon, sort of "in the footsteps of Earnest Hemmingway." (Hemingway fans will find all kinds of allusions to his life/works in this story).  There, in Paris, he purchases an old beat-up briefcase at an antiquarian shop.  He and Dora come home, Rury with his briefcase.

At home fiddling around with the briefcase, still also wondering what to do since his own novel (which he had spent three years writing was never going to get published) he finds that lodged in a somewhat hidden inner pocket of the briefcase is a worn, browning manuscript...

He starts to read it.  He falls in love with it.  It's about a young American soldier (played in flashbacks by Ben Barnes) in France just after World War II, who falls in love with a young French woman (played in flashbacks by Nora Arnezeder).  Having nothing to do, and his own inspirations gone, Rory Jansen, starts _retyping_ the novel into his laptop at night.  He doesn't quite know why he's doing it, but it keeps him busy in the evenings at least "pretending," in a sense, that he's a still writer.

Well, one morning his wife, Dora, sees the text on his computer ... AND SHE LOVES IT.  She comes to him with a big kiss, asking him: "Why didn't you tell me?"  She praises the work to high heaven, telling him that she always believed in him but ... wow! THIS MANUSCRIPT she tells him will DEFINITELY get published.  What's Rory to do?  He had just finished retyping that manuscript into his computer.  At work, he takes it to one of the publishing agents there, Richard Forde (played by John Hannah), and tells him quite modestly: "Look, I've been working here for 2 years, and I've never bothered anybody with any of my stuff, but I was just wondering if you would look this manuscript over and let me know what you think." 

Well publishing agent Richard Forde "looks over the manuscript" over the weekend and _can't put it down_.  He loves it!   On the following Monday, when he sees Rory Jensen, he calls him over, tells him that he honestly loved the book and asks if he's shown it to any other publishing houses. When Rory answers that no, he asks him right then and there if he could be his agent and publish the book.  The book, of course, becomes an enormous literary success winning all kinds of critical acclaim...!

BUT ... as famed fiction writer Clay Hammond continues then with the _second excerpt_ of his novel about the fictional writer Rory Jansen, the plot _inevitably_ "thickens."  One day, an Old Man (played by Jeremy Irons) sits down next to the now famous novelist Rory Jansen on a bench in a park somewhere in New York City.  And there he confronts him with a question: "You know when, I was reading _your_ book, I felt like _I was there_.  I _could taste_ that wine.  I _could taste_ that young woman Celia's lips.  I've always wanted to ask someone as famous and gifted as you: how does one get _so inspired_ to such powerful prose like that?"  And of course it becomes progressively clear that this Old Man was that "young soldier" of the manuscript and yes he even explains to Rory how that brief case with that manuscript had gotten lost...

BOOM ... Okay, what the heck to do?  In Clay Hammond's novel, Rory Jansen actually wants to come clean.  But Dora, his agent, and EVEN THE OLD MAN, try to talk him out of it.  To many critics' complaints, the story of Rory Jansen ends unresolved.  And in a final twist, when a young adoring grad student, named Daniela (played by Olivia Wilde) who's clearly read, reread and read again Clay Hammond's novel that he had been reading to his audience confronts Clay Hammond (privately) with the possibility that CLAY HAMMOND was actually the RORY JANSEN character in his novel, the film leaves THAT also unresolved.

And honestly a lot of the critics have complained about this!  For goodness sake folks, we all pretend to be adults/to be mature.  But when we go to the movies, we seem to want fairy tales.  (And it still is actually something of a fairy tale).  This movie didn't end badly or disappointingly.  It ends as a discussion piece asking: What would you do? 


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BLOG AUTHOR'S UPDATE - PayItSquare / PayPal Driven Donation Page Added

Dear Friends and Readers of this Blog,

Since its beginning nearly two years ago, FR. DENNIS AT THE MOVIES, has experienced ever increasing readership and has even begun to receive some acclaim.

Yet from the beginning, the goal has been to see if a Blog such as this, seeking to promote dialogue between Conemporary Culture and Faith, could become a self-supporting ministry. Yes, the task ahead is daunting, but one has to start somewhere ;-).

So today, I set up a PayItSquare / PayPal Driven Donations Page to begin to see if the Blog could start to cover its costs.  The page is set-up to accept TWO KINDS OF DONATIONS:

(1) A FREQUENT READER DONATION (suggested $6 whenever you feel like it, or feel guilty enough to contribute ;-).  Consider it like buying a magazine on a newsstand.  Yes, you can continue to read the blog for free.  But you could also hand the magazine that you bought over to a friend to read afterwards (or read a book or magazine that a friend had bought and lent you).  In any case, the operation of a blog like this does incur real costs in terms of both money and time, and it is fair to occasionally contribute to its continued operation.  

(2) A "PATRON" LEVEL DONATION (suggested $25 but you could donate more or less) which would be for those who'd like to perhaps make a more definitive statement of support of the Blog and its mission of promoting a Dialogue between Contemporary Culture (as expressed in Film) and our Faith.

IN BOTH CASES THESE WOULD BE "ONE TIME" (rather than RECURRING) DONATIONS. And you would receive an e-mail giving thanks for your contribution from me on behalf of the Friar Servants of Mary - USA Province.  The Province is registered in the United States as a religious/charitable institution.  All proceeds collected above expenses (strictly accounted) will go to the Province.  As such your contributions would be tax deductible.  FURTHER, if you give a truly significant donation (on the order of hundreds or even thousands of dollars ;-), you can be absolutely certain that you would be hearing from us to make sure that you receive all the required paperwork so that your generous contribution to the Servites would be recognized by the tax authorities.  FINALLY, if you are reading this Blog from OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES, while I really _doubt_ that you could deduct your donations from your taxes, I'd honestly appreciate your contributions as well especially if you are a frequent reader.  It'd be a nice gesture to do so _on occasion_.

I honestly envision that most donations to this blog would be small.  So I doubt that for most people (both from inside the United States and outside) their donations here would have a meaningful bearing on their taxes (though your contributions, large or small, would _certainly_ have a meaningful impact on this Blog / developing Ministry). If however your donation would be large, you can be sure that I/we in the Province will do what we is proper/needed to help make sure it's recognized by the proper tax authorities. 

Again, this is a rather daunting and arguably-ego risking task.  I fully expect that particularly the first few months will be bruising.  But I'm seeking to move this Blog to the next levels of its journey:

PHASE 1 (4-6 months - Mar 2013) - The blog becomes able to pay for its direct expenses (gas/tickets/appropriate donations to open source materials - wikipedia/imdb referenced in my reviews) -- $250/mo.

PHASE 2 (12 - 18 months - Mar 2014) - The blog truly starts to pay for itself covering both expenses and at least minimally the effort involved (assuming 20 reviews a month at 2 hrs/review and a pay rate of $10/hour = $400/mo+expenses) -- $650/mo.

PHASE 3 (2-3 years - Sept 2015) - The blog brings in enough money to pay for expenses + 1/2 half time salary ($15000/yr or $1250/mo + expenses) -- $1500/mo.

PHASE 4 (4-5 years - Sept 2017) - The blog becomes capable of supporting a full time salary ($30,000/hr or $2500/mo + expenses) -- $2750/mo.

So may God then continue to bless this project, and let us see what God wills ;-).  And in any case BLESSINGS TO ALL!

Fr. Dennis Kriz, OSM

Robot & Frank [2012]

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

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review

Robot & Frank (directed by Jake Shreier and written by Christopher D. Ford) is a movie I went to somewhat warily and finally only as an early matinee.  And while I continue to think of the film as perhaps a bit too "original" / "outside of the box" for its own good, as a matinee or a rental, I would _definitely_ recommend it to Seniors and/or grown children of Seniors, because, well, the film "grows on you" ;-)

The film is set "in the near future" presumably somewhere in upstate New York and is about the relationship between a Robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard) and an older man named Frank (played by Frank Langella) who's been living alone but has been increasingly become forgetful and less able to take care of himself.  Frank's son, Hunter (played by James Mardsen) bought him the Robot because he lives five hours away from his father (presumably in New York City) and has become increasingly worried about him.  As is often the case, Frank values his independence, doesn't want to be burden to his kids -- besides Hunter, Frank also has a globe-trotting daughter named Madison (played by Liv Tyler) who's a journalist of the vein of Cristiane Ananpour who Skypes regularly, ... but each time from "God knows where ..." ;-) -- and Frank really doesn't want to go to "a home."  So what then to do?  It's "the near future" in this film and so Hunter buys his "set-in his ways" generally grumpy dad the Robot to "tie him over."

Now folks, imagine buying _your_ older parent "a robot" :-).  "Just turn the thing off!" Frank tells Hunter when he sees it. "You can't turn me off and only Hunter knows the passcode," replies the Robot in a gentle-sounding but firm voice of a machine operating with the certainties of ones and zeroes knowing that while as a machine he/she/it doesn't really care if he/she/it were turned on or off, it was simply impossible for Frank to do so unless Hunter gave him the passcode to do so.  So there ;-).  The robot has in his own way a sense of humor / attitude ;-).

It turns out that as a housekeeper, the Robot from "the near future" is actually quite good:  It can clean, it can dust, it can vacuum.  It knows to look for closets to look for these items.  It knows to look into the refrigerator/pantry for food items, kitchen cabinets for pots, pans and dishes.  Heck it can even cook Frank "healthy food" -- "yuck!' ;-).  And it can serve as a giant walking alarm clock, poking him, saying: "Hey Frank, it's 7, you should be getting up" -- double "yuck" ;-)

Frank doesn't really warm up to the Robot until he realizes that he can manipulate/have some fun with him.  It turns out that Frank has had something of a "colorful" past:  He had been a burglar in his younger years, both lucky (he had stolen some fairly valuable stuff in the past) and unlucky (he served 2 jail terms - of 6 and 10 years respectively for his crimes, first for burglary and then for tax evasion).  In any case, he had spent, arguably wasted, a good deal of his life on becoming a really good burglar.  Yet, now with increasing age and most of his past friends presumably either passed (or in jail ...), he was wasting away in his reasonably nice but "out of the way...," home somewhere in upstate New York.  (Was he still hiding / "laying low" or was this the only kind of place that someone like him "with a record" would have been allowed to live in peace?)  In any case, what was Frank to do?  Well he wasn't going to "start a garden" as the programmed to be constructively compassionate Robot was suggesting to him.  Instead, it occurred to him that this Robot could actually be "really good" at picking locks ;-).

The Robot, programed to be concerned for Frank's well-being, and, well, fundamentally _amoral_ doesn't necessarily find anything wrong with Frank exercising both his mental and physical faculties practicing picking locks (or even casing a house or establishment for a robbery). The only criterion that the Robot is concerned with is one of "minimizing risk to his (Frank's) well-being" (in the case of plotting a robbery -- minimizing primarily the risk of getting caught...) and heck Frank's concerned about that too ;-).

So Frank and the Robot become "friends," of sorts, in crime.  There's also a love interest in the story, a librarian named Jennifer (played by Susan Sarandon) for whom Frank decides to perform his first robbery (stealing an old venerable copy of Don Quijote ...).  The Robot, again programmed to be concerned for Frank's well-being is programmed to encourage the building of friendships between Frank and others, expecially between Frank and someone like Jennifer who is both of the appropriate age and unattached.  So, once again, the Robot is manipulated to "go along..." which he/she/it does dispassionately (except for concern for Frank's well-being).

This Don Quijote motiff probably saves the film.  Yes, Frank manipulated the Robot to participate in some fairly bad things.  But he's "an old person" trying to impress a similarly appropriately older lady.  So just like the Robot, most of us, the veiwers are somewhat manipulated by the film-makers' to give Frank "the benefit of the doubt" as well.

Still in its gentleness and humor, the movie does offer the viewer much to think about:

Could robots be useful as caretakers and even companions for people in need?  In the United States, we haven't necessarily thought of much robots taking-on such a role.  However, the Japanese have certainly been thinking along these lines, having already invented and successfully marketed "mechanical pets" for the elderly and others who would otherwise be lonely but would also not necessarily be capable to taking care of more "normal" (biological/living) pets that would need to be fed and taken-out of the house occasionally to be taken care of, etc.

Would people inevitably find ways of manipulating robots to do some fairly dasterdly deeds?  The aging and increasingly forgetful Frank was not necessarily capable of taking _full_ advantage of his Robot in his "twilight years crime spree."  However, one could easily imagine young bank-robbers, car thieves, etc having actually robots do the stealing and even "get away driving" following a heist. 

How would even the most "human" of robots differ from people and would those differences be necessarily bad?  There's a point in the film when Frank and the Robot find themselves in danger of getting caught and the Robot, programmed to be concerned for Frank's well-being suggests to (the increasingly _forgetful_...) Frank that Frank might have to "reformat" the Robot's hard-drive (to presumably erase any memory that the Robot had of Frank's/his crime).  Frank finds the prospect of doing that to the Robot shocking.  Indeed, arguably that's his biggest nightmare (that he, Frank, would one day lose all his memory...).  However, in the case of the Robot, the Robot assures him that he, the Robot, would just "reboot" and be fine. ;-)

Anyway, this is a gentle movie.  I would still look to see it as a bargain matinee or a rental.  But it does sneak-up on you and it has a lot to offer even the reluctant viewer who gives it a chance ;-).

ADDENDUM --

I was recently confronted by difference between how the Japanese view robotics and how we, Americans (and probably Europeans) generally do while seeing the Japanese animated film Castle in the Sky (orig. Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta) [1986], which played recently at the Gene Siskel Film Center.   Subsequently, I found and read an excellent book on Japan's embracing of robotic technology by Timothy Horniak called Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robotics.  IMHO, if you're at all interested in the subject, it's well worth the read!


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