Land of Eb [2012]

MPAA (Unrated would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing

Land of Eb (directed and cowritten by Andrew Williamson along with John Hill) which played recently at the 48th Chicago International Film Festival (Oct 11-25, 2012), is a gentle if sad story about family of immigrants from the Marshall Islands headed by grandfatherly Jacob (played by Jonithan Jackson) trying to make a life for themselves in the Kona District of the Big Island of Hawaii with still some hope of being able to send some support to their relatives living closer to home.

The story of Jacob and his family is one that many immigrants could certainly relate to.  They are "making do" in their new land.  They own a piece of land on that Big Island of Hawaii and are growing some coffee on it.  The adults also work various odd jobs (including harvesting the coffee of other farmers/planters on the island).  They have a house, one which one would imagine would be typical of the poorer strata of people living in rural Hawaii.  And they have a pickup truck and a couple of other older functional cars that help the various members of the family eek out the existence that they have.  The adults work, try to instill values in their kids.  THEY ALL GO TO A LOVELY CHURCH built and maintained by other Marshallese/Pacific Islander immigrants like themselves.

But they also struggle -- with a certain degree of racism against them (people try to cheat them, make occasionally make fun of their accents) AND with, well, consumerism.  As "functional" (even Spartan) as their existence would initially seem, it becomes clear that Jacob has become something of a "gadget guy."  He has a ham radio, which he, no doubt, bought initially with the intention of communicating with his far flung relatives closer to home.  Except, it becomes clear that he doesn't necessarily talk to them all that much on that radio, though he does use that ham radio talk to others (other enthusiasts).  Over the years, he's also bought all kinds of (relatively) inexpensive video equipment.  He's also built a number of "booms" and other cinematographic equipment himself, making it clear that he used to have some ambitions in utilizing all that equipment to do some film making/story telling.  We also see him trying to talk to some customer service agent somewhere in hopes of getting himself connected to the internet out there in the rural Kona District of the Big Island of Hawaii.  That however appeared to be "a bridge too far."  And indeed, most of these projects appeared to have become beyond his reach, because as the story progresses, we find that Jacob has come down with cancer.

So what now?  Unable to really help his folks back in his home country, and unable to realize those personal projects that he had embarked on in his new existence, he just struggles now to focus on providing for his immediate family living with him on the Big Island of Hawaii.  And he does manage to tell his granddaughter the story of The Land of Eb after which this film is named:  

Once upon a time a famine stuck the island where a young boy and his mother had lived.  And so the mother sent him out to a reef to dive for some clams so that they would have something to eat.  Well he spent the whole day diving, and sure enough by the end of the day, his boat was almost full of clams.  HOWEVER, he was he hungry.  And so he ended up eating almost all the clams and returned home to tell his mother that he found none.  He did the same for some time, each time returning home with next to nothing for his mother.  Finally, one day he had an accident and never returned.  And the entire village laughed at him because he was the only one who ever dove into "The Land of Eb" where there were enough clams for everyone and yet was somehow never able to provide for his mother.

IT'S A SAD STORY THAT ANY IMMIGRANT FAMILY WOULD CERTAINLY UNDERSTAND ...
My own folks were (Czech) immigrants as well ...

ADDENDUM:

What would a Marshallese family be doing in Hawaii to begin with?  Well aside from the lure that Hawaii (part of the United States) would probably have on Pacific Islanders in any case, the Marshall Islands were the site of massive post-World War II nuclear tests conducted by the United States.  As a result of the radioactive fallout, many of Marshall Islanders were evacuated from their ancestral homes to become refugees.  Earlier in the year, I reviewed another film on the topic, a documentary called Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Project 4.1, which was about the plight of Marshallese Islanders who have been moved back and forth over decades as a result of many of their home islands having been contaminated by the tests.


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Flower Buds (orig. Poupata) [2011]

Unrated (would be R)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CSFD listing - [CZ, ENG trans]

Flower Buds (orig. Poupata) [IMDb][CSFD, Eng trans] is an award winning Czech film (w. Eng subtitles) written and directed by Zdeněk Jiráský [IMDb][CSFD, Eng Trans] which played recently at the 48th Annual Chicago International Film Festival (Oct. 11-25, 2012).  Back in the Czech Republic, it won 4 Czech Lions [Eng Trans] (the nation's equivalent to the Oscars) including for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Actor in a Leading Role.  At the Chicago Int'l Film Festival it won the Silver (2nd Place) in the New Director Competition.

What's it about?  Well the film's really a devastating indictment of the state of the family in Czech society today.  Every single character in the story except for 2 Vietnamese immigrants (more on the two below) is portrayed as being a real mess.  Yet as hard as it is for someone like me (of Czech descent still very much in contact relatives and "the old country") to watch a film like this, it is a testament to the cultural critical, indeed prophetic role that the artistic community _can play_ in a society.  When there is a problem in society, it is often the artistic community that finds itself calling attention to it and often to the initial upset of the society in general.  No one likes to see/hear bad news.  Yet how can problems be confronted (or one can live honestly) unless they are faced? 

The American observer may find it utterly surprising that in contemporary Czech society the _artistic community_ has been consistently challenging society to recover at least a basic sense of personal morality including (and perhaps _especially_) a basic sense of sexual morality.  Why?  Because the current state of personal morality in the Czech Republic (and throughout much of Europe and especially in post-Communist lands) has been appalling.  Thus then this film, set in December (in the days/weeks leading up to and following Christmas) in a small industrial city (the towns of Kladno or Zlín come to mind) in the contemporary Czech Republic.

The father of the family in the film, Jarda (played by Vladimír Javorský [IMDb][CSFD, Eng Trans], begins the story working as a railway switch operator outside a large industrial plant.  However, he spends much of his time (alone) sitting in his booth, building model cars, boats, etc out of matches (basically a "hard" but certainly _not_ particularly meaningful activity...).   He also has a massive gambling addiction spending much of his time in the evenings in the local bar feeding money that he no longer has (he borrows from the bar owner) into slot machines.

Jarda's wife, Kamila (played by Malgorzata Pikus [IMDb][CSFD, Eng Trans]) works as a street cleaner by day and is part of a local synchronized gymnastics group calling itself "Poupata" or "Flower Buds" (from which the film takes its name).  The group represents a vestige of past "glory" when such groups would be organized to come together both first under the pan-Slavic nationalistic Sokol movement and later during the Communist era by the government sanctioned the Spartakiad movement to enormous regional even national gatherings where all these little groups would "exercise together" performing all kinds of often spectacular stadium-sized synchronized feats.  In this film, however, all that we see is a group of 30-40 women calling themselves "The Flowerbuds" meeting together to practice at a local and rather rickety/delapitated gym.  And how do they finance their activities?  Well, the 30-40 local women (many like Kamila in their 40s and even 50s) shoot an annual erotic calendar...

Their son Honza (meaning "Johnny" played by Miroslav Pánek [IMDb]) who looks like a student or a recently graduated student, in any case unemployed and not particularly looking for work, makes some extra cash by growing marijuana hydroponically with a couple of his buddies in a tarp covered chamber hidden under a viaduct somewhere.  Their late teenage daughter Agata (played by Marika Soposká [IMDb] [CSFD, Eng Trans]) also possibly graduated but also certainly unemployed and also not particularly looking for work finds herself pregnant presumably by one of Honza's friends but it becomes clear as the story goes on that she's not entirely sure by whom ... And tragically it turns out that Agata is actually "the brains" and even arguably _the conscience_ of the family..

So who the heck among all these people is actually working?  Kamila (the mother) is, and then there are the two Vietnamese immigrants that I mentioned above and promised to return to here.  Their names are Hue (played by Thi Min Ngygnen [CSFD, Eng Trans]) and her husband Long (played by Kim Son Ngygnen) and they live on the floor below the Czech family.

What the heck would Hue and Long be doing in the Czech Republic to begin with?  Well, there is actually a sizable Vietnamese minority living in the Czech Republic as a consequence of the Vietnam War.  Communist Czechoslovakia actually provided a fair amount of the weapons to the Communist combatants in the war presumably in good part to give the Soviet Union deniability "We're not providing weapons to the Vietcong, the Czechs and Slovaks are..."  The U.S./the West did similar things as well.  Western backed insurgencies during the Cold War tended to use "Belgian," "Israeli" or even "South African" weapons.  Anyway, the North Vietnamese had no way to pay for the weapons that they received other than ... sending their own people to places like Communist Czechoslovakia to work Vietnam's debt off.   After the fall of Communism, these Vietnamese de facto indentured servants had no place to go.  So a large number (most?) of them stayed.  An excellent article regarding relations between Communist Era Czechoslovakia / the post-Communist Era Czech Republic and Vietnam can be found here [Cz-Orig][Eng-trans].

Now in a place like the Czech-lands where ethnicity pretty much defines national identity, one would expect racism to abound.  Ask a Gypsy in the C.R. and he/she will _definitely_ tell you that it does.  However, as in the States, the Vietnamese have proven _so hardworking_ that the Vietnamese have earned near universal respect of the Czech populace.  Yes, one does hear ethnic slurs in reference to the Vietnamese in the Czech Republic, the principal one being "Rákosníci" which means "straw heads" (or more literally "straw people") for the characteristic pointed straw hats that Vietnamese peasants were known to wear back in Vietnam.  BUT when year after year the children of Vietnamese immigrants seem to outscore Czech children in pretty much every category of learning including Czech language/history ;-), the Czechs who do generally consider themselves a good-natured lot and being a small country always having sympathy for the underdog find themselves in admiration of this surprising Vietnamese minority among them.  (I know this from my own relatives who live in the Czech Republic... who often would shake their heads in disbelief when trying to explain the historical accident of why Vietnamese immigrants live among them, but have almost universal praise for their hard work, honesty and achievement).

So it does not surprise me greatly to see a Czech film about contemporary life in the Czech Republic where arguably the only "good people" in the entire film are the Vietnamese (even as the Vietnamese immigrants admit that they hate the snow ... ;-).

This then is the setup of the film.  Much of course happens.  It certainly does not portray contemporary life in the Czech Republic particularly kindly.  But then the film is clearly intended to serve as a mirror to the Czech people of today with some pointed questions as to why contemporary life in the C.R. seems so often to be so morally bankrupt/hopeless.   And as one in my profession I can't help but find that Confession to be laudable.  After all, there's the saying I've learned here in the United States: "The first step out of a hole is to stop digging." 

So good job director Zdenku and the rest of your crew / cast.  Good job! And let's all hope that the movie makes a positive impact both in the C.R. and beyond.


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The Sessions [2012]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review 
Roger Ebert's review

The Sessions (written and directed by Ben Lewin) is a film that played at the recent 48th Annual Chicago International Film Festival (Oct. 11-25, 2012) prior to its release to "indie"/art house theaters throughout the United States.  The film is based on a 1990 article written by Mark O'Brien (played in the film by John Hawkes) a San Francisco Bay Area journalist, severely disabled since 6 years of age due to polio, who after a good deal of reflection set about to lose his virginity (in his 30s) by means of a "sex surrogate" named Cheryl (played in the film by Helen Hunt).  The original article can be found at Mark O'Brien's archived blog (O'Brien passed away in 1995) under the title "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate."

I would definitely recommend to any adult having concerns about seeing the movie to first read the article because I do think that most adults would immediately understand.  Yes, the story is definitely an R-rated one (PARENTS please do take note.  This story is not for your kids).  However, it is a remarkable case and the amount of reflection that the poor man does, both BEFORE and (in the article) AFTER should give his readers pause.  This severely disabled man wonders at the end of his article whether his adventure was worth it and he asks this with a sobriety that would impress many/most Confessors.  (Much of the film, in fact, involves discussion between O'Brien and his Confessor (played by William H. Macy).  However, I don't make this assessment here on any dialogue in the film, generally okay but necessarily created/contrived(?) for the film, but rather by O'Brien's own closing paragraphs with which he ends his article.  The frankness and sobriety of his own article make the film credible).

So yes, this is a provocative film, but it is definitely not a dumb one.  And three seconds into the movie I do believe that most viewers will understand.  What difficulties this man had to put up and what thoughts/reflections he nonetheless was able to leave us is IMHO remarkable.


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Smashed [2012]

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

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's listing

Smashed (directed and cowritten by James Pondsoldt along with Susan Burke) is an excellent movie geared toward young adults that could serve as a useful reminder that alcoholism is a disease that doesn't just effect "middle aged" or otherwise "old people."
Kate (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Charlie (played by Aaron Paul) are two quite happily married college-educated 20 somethings starting out life in L.A.  She's a school teacher, he's a music critic.  They probably met in a bar.  They're fun together.  They clearly like each other.  One gets the sense that when they are out together "clubbing" (and he's technically "at work") they're probably _really fun_ to be around.  It's just it becomes clear very quickly ... there's more going on.

What do I mean?  Well when they wake up in the morning after a night out, she's wet the bed ... again.  To deal with her hangover, she finishes-off the beer she left on the table from the previous night before stepping into the shower.  Then before getting out of the car when she arrives at work (remember, she's a school teacher, teaching 3rd grade) she takes a swig out of flask she keeps in the glove compartment.

It all seems actually like a regular start of the day for the two.  Charlie, who after all, reviews bands and therefore actually "works mostly at night" doesn't have to get-up that early in the morning.  So he honestly sees "changes the sheets" in the morning for her, who has to rush out to work, as "part of his morning routine."  That stale beer that she finishes off before stepping into the shower may take a bit of the edge of a throbbing hangover that she might feel getting up, and the swig in the school parking lot may give her a bit of "liquid courage" to face the rambunctious 3rd graders that await her. 

However, this turns out to _not_ be an ordinary morning for Kate.  Life's caught up to her.  In the midst of a mathematics drill with her 3rd graders, she suddenly has to heave ... and vomits in front of them, missing the little plastic garbage can next to her desk by a few inches.  "Teacher are you pregnant... Mommy was throwing-up when she was expecting my little sister."  Without an excuse, Kate ... and the rest of the movie follows ...

The event described would probably shake-up most people.  After all, no one particularly likes lying to kids.  Additionally, she gets called-out rather quickly by the assistant principal Davies (played by Nick Offerman) who has to step-in to take her class and is a recovering alcoholic himself.  A number of other things happen soon afterwards to solidify Kate's realization that she's got a problem.  And yes, she does take a chance with going to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

However what makes the film is what follows.  Entering into AA is famously only the first step in a 12-step recovery process and Kate hasn't been living in a vacuum.  She's had "a life," some of which we have seen, other aspects of which are only referred to.  She has relationships: a boss (Principal Barnes played by Megan Mullaly), coworkers most notable of which is that assistant principal Davies (who we find out still has his own issues), then of course there's her husband who's basically a good guy and even more or less supportive though he'd really prefer that she'd remain his #1 drinking buddy and then she has a mother (played by Mary Kay Place) who we meet later on.  Kate comes also to have an AA sponsor (played by Octavia Spenser).

And there are still definitely challenges, notably an entire school including all those third graders who think she's having a baby.  The adults would normally understand, right?  But kids... and parents ... and a not completely informed boss forced to deal with very upset parents ... and ... you get the picture...   Yup, it's a challenge to come to come to terms with all the ramifications of one's past addiction and the lies told to keep it going ...

So what we have here is a nice, simple and certainly accessible story to a new generation about what it takes to fix one's life if one comes to find that addiction's been part of it.  Good job!


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Cloud Atlas [2012]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  Roger Ebert (4 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert's review

Cloud Atlas, screenplay written and directed by Todd Tykwer, Andy and Lana Wachowski and based on David Mitchell's novel by the same name premiered recently at the 48th Chicago International Film Festival (Oct 13-25, 2012).   Like The Matrix [1999-2003] films for which the Chicago area residing the brother and sister team of Andy and Lana Wachowski is best known for, this truly Sweeping [TM] film starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Xun Zhou, David Gyasi, Jim Broadbent, Suzanne Sarandon, Hugh Grant and others, playing various characters in various epochs of time extending from "120 years after the Fall" to 2144 (or 130 years after our own), the film is more or less obviously intended to have religious overtones.  And I do want to make it clear here that as a work of speculative fiction, intended for a global audience (as again in the case of The Matrix [1999-2003] movies), I _don't_ find the effort here to be out-of-hand-wrong.  Indeed, as I've written before on this blog (in my reviews of the Tree of Life [2011], Meloncholia [2011] the Through the Wormhole [2011+] television series and Prometheus [2012]) I generally tend to welcome speculative efforts such as this (EVEN IF I'd disagree, and even for dogmatic reasons, with parts of them). 

The central conflict that ties all the vignettes together in Cloud Atlas is that of Universal Brother/Sisterhood vs. "The Natural Order of things" (basically Darwinism) where as the film says: "the weak are meat and the strong get to eat."  Given that I belong to a Church (the Catholic Church) that sees itself as having a Universal mission and understands all people to be fundamentally brothers and sisters to each other I can not but find this film to be overwhelmingly salutary. 

Yes, we can get bogged down in relative details (Does the film promote a belief in reincarnation?  Should that (in a film) really matter (_honestly_)?  Given that the film was funded by a production company coming out of SINGAPORE should Americans/Westerners really expect otherwise?  Can CATHOLICS AT LEAST come to see more or less obvious similarities between the Eastern concept of "karma" (continuous "reincarnation" until a soul finally gets it right...) and the purgation process that we would argue would take place in Purgatory (where we hope to all be until "we finally get it right...") and "let the argument go" (at least for a moment).  Hindus/Buddhists presumably would be just as proud their own beliefs as we Catholics would be of ours.  Can we at least choose to look for similarities rather than focus on differences?  (How can any serious inter-religious dialogue hope to succeed if one's starting position towards "the other side" is "you're out of hand _wrong_?")

Anyway, as a work of speculative fiction, WHAT A FILM!  Great job folks!  All of you!


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Chasing Mavericks [2012]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review 
Roger Ebert's review

Chasing Mavericks (directed by Michael Apted and Curtis Hanson, screenplay by Kario Salem based on the story by Jim Meenagen and Brandon Hooper) is about a (then) teenager named Jay Moriarty (played by Johnny Weston) who just outside of his hometown of from Santa Cruz, CA successfully surfed one of the biggest waves (a "Maverick") ever recorded.

Given some of the personal challenges that Jay faced -- he largely raised himself as his father abandoned him and his mother Kristy Moriarty (played by Elizabeth Shue) when he was young, and ma' who was struggling with alcoholism wasn't exactly the most reliable person either, the true parent figures in his life were his neighbors, roofer during the week, surfer/"Maverick hunter" on early mornings, weekends and honestly whenever he could break-away Frosty Hesson (played by Gerard Butler) as well as his more sensible wife Brenda (played by Abigail Spenser) -- the film itself is being presented as having an uplifting/positive message.

However, I honestly do have my reservations:  Given that the film notes at the end that Jay died cliff diving some years later, at age 22, I'm HONESTLY _not sure_ if parents would like their teens to "live (exactly) as Jay did."

Most of us who've grown-up in the States know that there is a beauty and freedom in surfing and this movie is certainly celebrates that.  But there are also more problematic sides to the surfing subculture: _perhaps_ excessive risk taking as well as a culture of, again, largely "carefree" recreational drug use.  To be sure, both of these "more problematic" aspects of the surfing subculture are hinted at in the film.  The Maverick style waves that the film shows Jay surfing at the end of the film are truly _insane_ (and conversely honestly make the film ;-) and Jay's best friend and surfer buddy is shown apparently selling drugs out of the parking lot of the fast food restaurant that the two work at.  These more problematic elements of the surfer culture are, however, largely buried under the film's celebration of "surf and sun." 

Don't get me wrong, I do think that I _get_ (understand) the joy/freedom that must come with surfing, but I also understand "Frosty's" wife Brenda's Hesson's request of her husband: "Please promise me that the rush that must come with surfing down a 30 foot wave will not overpower your responsibility to me and your kids."   

Frosty is shown at the end of the film understanding Brenda's request, I do hope that readers here (especially the young ones) will appreciate it as well.

Still, "wouldn't it be nice?" ... ;-)


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Silent Hill 3D Revelation [2012]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review

Silent Hill 3D Revelation (written and directed by Michael J. Bassatt) like its predecessor Silent Hill [2006] is a film adapted from the (originally Japanese) "survival horror" video game series Silent Hill set in a fictitious "small American town" by the same name.  Like the video game, so the film, takes place in a "multiverse," that is on one level the story takes place in our own world (in and around that small town called Silent Hill) and on other level it exists in an alternate somewhat "dreamy" / "nightmarish" reality where ghastly things take place.

In the current movie, Australian actress Adelaide Clemens plays the lead role of Heather (in this world) / Alyssa (in the alternate one).  She has found herself moving quite a bit with her dad (played by Sean Been) in this world in order to try to avoid returning the town of Silent Hill, but, alas, she finds herself coming back to that town (or at least its equivalent in the other dimension) anyway.  Much of course ensues.

With the film being released around Halloween time and having been responsible for our parish's youth group over the years, I found the feel of this movie to be that of a good (meaning really scary) "virtual haunted house" (I saw the movie in 2D but I would imagine that if one wanted to spend the extra $4 to see it in 3D it _probably_ would not be a waste of money this time).

What I found annoying after a while was the film's arguably taking itself too seriously at times with regard to things "Occult."  Yes, I suppose some of this was necessary for the setup of the story, but I would have simply made "Silent Hill" some kind of "Gateway to Hell" / "Purgatory" (a la Dante) and just be done with it.  However, the film (and presumably the video game) chooses to dwell on what appear to be "Occult nuances" and I could imagine a great many Christian/Catholic parents finding this "really, really annoying" or worse.  And I would tend to agree.

However, rather than make a big thing of this, I would just suggest to parents to remind their teens (if their teens insist on wanting to see this movie or play the game) that this film/game is _really_ "just a story"/"game" and to honestly not dwell on the details.   As I recently wrote in my blogpost here about Paranormal Activity 4, there's really no need for any of us to become expert "Zoologists of Evil."  (There are plenty of far more positive ways we could spend our time...)


But heck, as a "virtual haunted house" or even as a "virtual descent into Hell" the film (and presumably the game) is really "kinda cool."  Just honestly LIKE DANTE "visit" these places "with a smile" ;-)


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