Alois Nebel [2011]

MPAA (UR / would be R)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CSFD* listing

Alois Nebel (2011) [IMDb] [CSFD*] (directed by Tomáš Luňák [IMDb] [CSFD*] based on the graphic novel by Jaroslav Rudiš [IMDb] [CSFD*] and Jaromír Svejdík (illustrator) [IMDb] by the same name) is a technically stunning, all black and white, hard-boiled animated film, which played recently at Chicago's 16th Annual European Union Film Festival held at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago.

In classic film noir fashion the story plays out in a cold, dark and ever raining/snowing setting.  It's the late fall of 1989.  The Berlin Wall is about to come down, but inhabitants of the mountain hamlet going by the name of Bílý Potok (Czech for "White Stream") nestled on the Czech side of the border between Communist era Czechoslovakia and Poland don't realize it yet.

Since Bílý Potok is a tiny speck on the map, with its only distinction that it has a railway going through it, not much seems to change from day-to-day.  And yet, if one pays closer attention, there's actually quite a bit going on (and passing through) this little dot on the map.

It's on the border between two Communist states.  Even though commerce is technically illegal, a lot of black market trafficking is taking place, between Poland and Czechoslovakia, of course, but also between both and the Soviet army garrison stationed discreetly in the forests nearby.  This Soviet garrison has been stationed on Czechoslovakian soil since the infamous Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.  Its original job had been to keep the post invasion Czechoslovakian regime reliable.  However, no doubt, since the beginning of the Solidarity era in Poland, it's taken on the second task of keeping Poland's Communist leadership in line as well.  Still, after 20 years of sitting in both discreetly and threateningly in a forest seemingly in the middle of nowhere, discipline in the garrison has to have waned.  With little going on, and so much stuff that could be pilfered and sold for odd profit, the temptation to get involved, indeed lead/dominate the black market trade would have been great.   So good ole Bílý Potok, a tiny spot on a map with a seemingly inconsequential railway station becomes actually a hub for all sorts of nefarious activity ...

But NONE of this 2-bit or even 10-bit black-market trafficking compares to the truly awful secret that played out there in the aftermath of World War II.  This is because though TODAY this little hamlet called Bílý Potok sits on the Czech side of the border with POLAND, before the war this mountain hamlet bordered GERMAN SILESIA and was largely inhabited by the famous Sudeten Germans and went by the hyphenated name Bílý Potok-Wiesbach.  During the Nazi era, no doubt the Czech name was dropped.  Then in revenge, in the months following the war, the Czechs expelled ALL THE GERMANS from Sudeten borderland region and erased the German parts of all the place names.

The expulsion of the Germans of  Bílý Potok-Wiesbach no doubt played out at the railway station.  And this then completes the background to the story.

Alois Nebel, Jr (voiced by Miroslav Krobot [IMDb] [CSFD*]) the ever quiet, even somewhat dour operator at the Bílý Potok railway station had lived all his life there.  His father, Alois Nebel, Sr had been the operator at the station at the end of the war.  Alois, Jr had only been a small boy at the time, but he saw a terrible thing.  Not only did he witness the ethnic Germans of his town being loaded on trains and expelled at the end of the war, but he saw his ethnic German babysitter Dorothe (voiced by Tereza Voříšková [IMDb] [CSFD*]) manhandled by Wachek (voiced by Leoš Noha [IMDb] [CSFD*]) one of the Czech Revolutionary Guards leading the expulsion of the ethnic Germans.  Alois, Jr never really knew what happened to Dorothe and as he grew older and Wachek became one of the State Security officers in the region, he knew not to ask.  But in his dreams, he knew that it probably did not go well for her... 

Indeed, it was Wachek and his kind that did most of the talking in those days.  And what they chose to talk about was enough to keep almost everybody else with any sense, silent.  Still those dreams...

Now, anyone who knows anything about hard-boiled detective stories, graphic novels and film noir films knows that deep dark secrets, both big and small, can't be kept down forever.  Eventually, they begin leak out.

By 1989, Alois' dreams had tormented him enough that he realizes that he needs help.  But where?  This was Communist Czechoslovakia.  Psychiatric services weren't being used to help people, they were being used to keep people who couldn't keep their mouths shut, SILENT.  So poor Alois, who needed some help with his dreams, soon finds himself in a real-life nightmare bigger than he he was ready for.  Still, even the authorities know that he's a "small fry."  And so after some time, and no doubt realizing that he was no real threat to anybody, much less the Regime, they let him go.

But there in the psychiatric institute, Alois runs into another guy, a mute, in his mid 40s.  No one knows who he is because he doesn't talk to anybody.  But he just showed-up one day in Bílý Potok with an old picture of the train station, old because the sign still read Bílý Potok-Wiesbach and in the picture were four people.  Among the people in that picture Dorothe, Alois' father and Wachek.  And, oh yes, the mute had also come to the town with an ax.  With that kind of an entry, he was arrested.  And soon after that, he was taken to the psychiatric unit because he wasn't talking, and not even repeated electroshock therapy seemed to be able to "make him sing."  Then one evening, suddenly the mute man was gone.

"Escaped!  How could he have escaped? "  Old man Wachek (voiced by Alois Švehlík [IMDb] [CSFD*]) , now retired from the State Security Service, still living in the same town of Bílý Potok shakes his head in disbelief as he hears of the story in local tavern.  "Why in my day, NO ONE EVER ESCAPED AND WE GOT ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE TO SING."

A few more trains pass through town and Alois, after getting out of the psychiatric unit, takes a ride to Prague (to ask the Railway Service for a job now that the one that he's had all his life had been taken from him while he was "away").  While he's there, he gets to witness the falling of the Communist Regime, though none of the people who he's around, himself included, really understand what it all means.

So a lot more rain, sleet and snow still falls on Bílý Potok before the story comes to its conclusion.  Still, if you know these kind of stories, You can probably guess how it ends by now.  The mute man who "escaped" comes back... 

Now who was the mute man?  Who did he come for?  Why?  If you know these kind of stories, the answers should come rather easily by now.   For in these kind of stories, there are crimes that are so awful, so personal that they simply cry out ...  And so even decades later, someone comes into town ... with a worn picture ... and an ax ... and ... it becomes patently clear that justice will finally be done.

I am simply in awe (and to be honest, a little bit frightened ...) that this classic Hollywood formula was applied so excellently here.


* Machine translations of Czech links provided into English are most easily viewed through use of Google's Chrome brower.


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Gypsy (orig Cigán) [2011]

MPAA (UR, would be PG-13)  AV Club (B+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CSFD* listing
Lidovky* review
AV Club review
 
Gypsy (orig Cigán) [2011] [IMDb] [CSFD*], a film by Slovakian director Martin Šulík [IMDb] [CSFD*] about a fictionalized Romani (Gypsy) teenager named Adam (played by Ján Mižigár [IMDb] [CSFD*]) living in a Romani village in contemporary Slovakia played recently as one of Slovakia's submissions to Chicago's 16th Annual European Union Film Festival held at the Gene Siskel Film Center in downtown Chicago.

The film was largely filmed in an actual contemporary Romani village* outside of the town of Richnava* in Slovakia.  All the Romani characters were played by Romani actors speaking the dialect of the village in which it was filmed.  Indeed, this was the first Slovakian film ever to be made almost entirely in the Romani language.*

For its technical excellence and its bravery in opening a window into a very controversial subject in contemporary Czech and Slovak society, the film won critical acclaim in both Slovakia and the Czech Republic.  It served as Slovakia's submission to the Best Foreign Language Film competition for the 2012 Oscars.*  It also won 4 awards including the Special Jury Prize at the 2011 Karlový Vary International Film Festival.*  More importantly, the film was covered favorably and with interest in the Romani press.

Despite such critical acclaim, the film did produce some protest in Slovakia (Slovakian Railways refused to allow the posting of advertisement posters for the film on its trains / railway stations on account of the film's negative portrayal of Slovakian Railway's treatment of Romani workers) and resounding (and in the opinion of the Czech "Rolling Stone"-like magazine Reflex shameful) silence among the Czech general public.* The gist of the Reflex article was that most of the lighter-skinned Czech general public simply prefers not to be bothered by the problems of the darker-skinned Romani community in its midst, which, of course, makes the film all the more interesting/important:  Why would a technically excellent and personable film be so ignored by its primary intended audience (the white Czech and Slovak public)?  

So what then is the actual film about?  The film is about a young Romani teenager, Adam (played by Ján Mižigár [IMDb] [CSFD*]), trying to make his way in the world encouraged by the legacy of his tragically deceased father, by a concerned and active local Catholic priest (played by Attila Mokos [IMDb] [CSFD*]) and by an idealistic Slovakian documentary film-maker to try to better himself, while pulled by his pragrmatic village "mafia like" Boss uncle (played by Miroslav Gulyas [IMDb] [CSFD*]) to remember first "who he is" (a Cigán what Czechs/Slovaks basically call Gypsies), become content with this fate, and then, like he, learn to thrive in it.

Indeed, Adam's uncle has learned to thrive in his situation.  Okay, he's done his time in prison at various times in his life.  But he scoffs at Adam when he comes home one day with a pair of sneakers and a couple of t-shirts he had received from the priest at the parish.  Why accept charity when you can steal better?  Mistreated at the odd job that the whites might give you?  Just learn to simply take what is your due.  And if you take "a bit more" than what was your due occasionally, fine, it all definitely evens out in the end.

In the person of Adam's uncle is both a fatalism and a resourcefulness that one can imagine could keep a beleaguered people alive but also self-evidently mistrusted by those who've been stolen from.

And while Adam is trying to figure-out his answer to this overarching Shakespearean drama: "To steal or not to steal..." he's also growing-up in other ways.  So there's a lovely Romani girl named Julka (played by Martina Kotlárová [IMDb] [CSFD*]) living a few shacks up the hill ... (Don't you just want to cry?)  But like that other Shakespearean drama, this budding romance finds itself "impossible" though for its own societally (both Romani and non) driven reasons.

Needless to say, much plays out in this very well constructed story.

Clearly, I liked this picture for both for its technical excellence and its challenge.  However, being American of Czech descent and also a Catholic priest, I'd like to extend that challenge beyond simply the rolling woodlands of Slavic Central Europe across the ocean to ethnic Slavic communities here in the United States.  I say this because in all honestly, Slavs have not had the "best of reputations" when it comes to race relations in the United States.  We, often called "ethnics" in the United States, have had a reputation of being very racist in our dealings with people of darker complexions (African Americans and Hispanics).

Having watched this film, I do wonder how much of this tendency of looking down on darker skinned people in the United States comes from a centuries honed mistrust/hatred of the indigenous darker-skinned Romani people "back home in the old country."


* Machine translations of Czech and Slovak links provided into English are most easily viewed through use of Google's Chrome brower.


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Dark Skies [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  Chicago Sun-Times (2 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Chicago Sun-Times review (P. Sobczinski) review

Dark Skies (written and directed by Scott Stewart) is, IMHO, the best film made by the Paranormal Activity franchise since its original.  This isn't to say that Dark Skies isn't formulaic or that it doesn't lean on a slew of previous horror and alien invasion/conspiracy movies (Invasion of the Body Snatchers [1956], Birds [1963], Poltergeist [1982], X-Files [1993-2002], Signs [2002] and, of course, Paranormal Activity [2007]).  However, there's been a long tradition in American horror films of building on / borrowing from previous films.  What makes films following in this tradition succeed or fail is how well they apply/mix the story elements that have been borrowed (and after hopefully adding something original to the tale) to produce something new.  I do believe that writer/director Scott Stewart does this remarkably well here.

So what is the film about?  The film is about a supremely "average" contemporary American family -- Daniel and Lacy Barrett (played by John Hamilton and Keri Russell respectively) and their two sons, early teen Jesse (played by Dakota Goyo) and 6 year old Sam (played by Kadan Rocket) -- living in some suburb somewhere in the United States.

Some time back, Daniel's lost his job (as a graphics designer).  As such, the family's been depending on Lacy's real-estate job to keep afloat, but "in this market..." it hasn't been easy.  Viewers are repeatedly reminded that the family has been cutting back on expenses.  They've ceased subscribing to their "home alarm system." When due to things happening in the story, they find that they have to revisit that decision, Daniel suggests that perhaps they could go without cable for a while.

To be sure, Daniel's been having job interviews but has been finding it increasingly hard to explain why he's been unemployed for so long and why he became unemployed in the first place (he tells an interviewer that after his previous firm had lost a particularly large contract, his "whole department was cut."  The interviewer shakes his head in sympathy but doesn't completely believe him ... If Daniel had been truly valuable to his previous firm, wouldn't they have tried to keep him even if the rest of the department had to go?

Things come to a head, when we see Daniel opening the family's mail after coming home from a particularly unsuccessful and increasingly embarrassing interview to see that he's received a 90-days past due notice on the family's house.  Yikes ...

In this environment, strange things start happening at the Barrett household.  Lacy hears something one night, goes down to the kitchen and finds the refrigerator open and random food strewn all around in a mess.  The next night, she again hears something and finds a weird sculpture made of a random assembly of empty pop and beer cans and kitchen utensils.  The next morning, they call the police.

The police officer (played by Josh Stamberg) is sympathetic but thinks it's an "inside job," that is, that maybe one of their kids did it.  But Daniel, a former graphics designer after all, notes that the structure's too clever, too symmetric, too ingenious for one of his kids to do, presumably while sleep walking.  When the following night, Lacy and Daniel, who've since restarted their "home alarm" security service hear it go off, and then find that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEIR FAMILY PICTURES in the living room STOLEN (the frames still there but EVERY ONE OF THE PICTURES was gone) they call the police again.  The police officer is now absolutely convinced that it has to be one of their boys.

Both Daniel and Lacy start to think that the younger son, Sam, has been actually acting rather strangely.  BUT WHERE ARE THEY GOING TO FIND THE MONEY TO TAKE HIM TO A COUNSELOR,. NOW?  That's when suddenly 800 birds (from three different directions) come crashing into the windows of the house.  And in the days that follow, EVERYONE of the Barrett family starts having unexplainable episodes.  What the heck is going on? 

Is the family simply "cracking" under the pressure of approaching financial collapse?  Or is something else going on?   (Go watch the film ... ;-)

It all makes for a classic American style horror movie of the past 50-60 years (since the 1950s-60s) and one that famed horror fiction writer Stephen King (Danse Macabre) would find impressive.  To say more would ruin the film, but honestly, what a great setup of a story of this kind!


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The Gatekeepers [2012]

MPAA (PG-13)  Chicago Sun-Times (4 Stars)  AV Club (A-)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Chicago Sun-Times (Omer M. Mozzaffar) review
AV Club (S. Tobias) review

The Gatekeepers [IMDb] (directed by Dror Moreh) is a remarkable Israeli documentary featuring interviews with the last six heads of Israel's security service Shin Bet.  It is inspired by Errol Morris' 2003 Academy Award winning documentary The Fog of War [IMDb], which featured interviews with Vietnam War era U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

Documentaries of this sort inevitably elicit concerns about the intentions of the film-makers and their subjects.  Is the documentary presented intended to be a hatchet job?  Alternatively, is it intended to be a "puff piece" exercise in apologetics, something akin to showing 'Pinochet eating flan with his grand-kids,' admitting perhaps that "mistakes were made" (What's a few 10,000 mothers and fathers, sons and daughters tortured and disappeared over 10+ years of dictatorship?) but if  such "mistakes were made," they were done "only for them..." (with a shot showing grandson 'Ricardo' kicking around a soccer ball and/or 'little Isabelita' chasing bubbles in the garden...).

Certainly more than a few Palestinians will be throwing their shoes at their television sets if the documentary gets shown in the Palestinian territories.  In probably the most difficult scenes to watch, one of the former heads of Shin Bet admitted that probably the worst part of a notorious incident in which the Israeli army / Shin Bet summarily killed two of four Palestinian terrorists who hijacked a bus (the Kav 300 affair) was that there were "(Israeli) journalists present who photographed the whole thing."  And in another scene, another of the former heads of Shin Bet explained that a Palestinian incarcerated by Shin Bet had died of basically an adult version of "Shaken Baby Syndrome" (According to the explanation given, the prisoner was "shaken around" by Israeli interrogators so much that his brain hit his own skull causing a concussion and subsequently his death.  Yea, right ... nobody in the United States would believe that kind of an explanation if someone died in police custody here.  Still since 9/11 we've been calling torture "enhanced interrogation techniques" as well...).

Still, the former heads of Shin Bet did come across as thoughtful intelligent people, all patriots but open basically a group of intelligent/pragmatic/"good soldier" Canaris-es rather than ideological/dogmatic (and ultimately Evil) Heydrich-s.  All six former heads agreed that Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories since the 1967 Six Day War has been brutal.  One former head noted that the Shoah/ Holocaust notwithstanding ("that was a necessarily special case") that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories since the Six Day War was akin to the Nazi occupations of most of the countries of Europe during World War II. Another noted that "every colonial regime inevitably becomes corrupt" and agreed "absolutely" with an Israeli professor who had predicted shortly after the Six Day War that continued occupation will result in Israel not having any partner to work with other than a group of corrupted Quislings who will never have the respect of their own people.

So what's the solution?  Well, actually documentary offers two.  One, is to talk, talk with everybody.  One of the former heads of Shin Bet said that he'd happily talk to everybody, including Ahmadinejad, noting that nothing is gained by not talking and that it's the informal conversations, with those kids and grand kids present, perhaps playing in the background, that help enemies to see each other's humanity.   The other approach is more pragmatic but one that apparently was used by Yitzhak Rabin's administration, the last time that the peace process had a chance: "Continue with the Peace Process as if there is no Terror, while going after the Terrorists as if there is no Peace Process."

All in all, I do think that this was a documentary that was worth making, and, who knows, could actually further a serious peace process in the future.



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85th Annual Academy Awards [2013] - Few Real Surprises in a Very Competitive Field

IMDb listing
Previous/Other years


The 85th Annual Academy Awards came and went yesterday with, all things considered, very few surprises.

Host Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy fame by-and-large stepped-up and proved that there was no need to work on an animatronic Billy Crystal or Whoopi Goldberg to continue hosting the awards show 20 or 30 years from now.  Still MacFarlane's "regular," mildly to wildly inappropriate, updated "Archie Bunker" persona on Family Guy perhaps made for a rather good fit for the Oscars.  I say this because it's become rather obvious to me since beginning to cover the Academy Awards on my blog that Hollywood / the Academy are far more "middle of the road" indeed "Americana" than many, especially those on the right would give them credit for.

Hence, both the audience in the theater and at home would wince a bit as MacFarlane (or his "bear" "Ted") made jokes about women, Jews and Hispanics and then happily applaud Hollywood giving itself recognition through the Best Picture Award (for Argo) for its "stepping-up when Washington (or Langley) call."

This "see we can be as Patriotic as anybody else..." sentiment on the part of mainstream Hollywood / the Academy becomes all the more clear when one considers its effective "deep-sixing" of Kathryn Bigalow's Zero Dark Thirty (one award for ... sound editing which it shared with the Bond picture Skyfall ;-).  "America does not torture" in Hollywood productions anyway (except when it looks really, really cool, like on 24) and wow does it not want to talk about it if it does.  Left utterly unanswered with Zero Dark Thirty's abandonment, is, of course, the question of the actual role of America's post-9/11, largely Bush Administration's, water-boarding of Al Queda's prisoners in the capture of Bin Laden.  Did it work?  One can only imagine Dick Cheney cracking his knuckles and with his half-smile responding: "Boy would you like to know..."  Apparently some matters are, well, "best left unresolved..."

But let's then "take out the flags" and celebrate Argo, honestly the only possible "positive" story that one could assemble (and it took 30+ years to do so...) out of the otherwise universally awful story of the Iranian hostage crisis if taken from almost any other perspective: US (humiliating), Iranian (despicably shameful), diplomatic (absolutely no one is safe), human (people are pawns).  And of course the real "payoff" will come if in a number of years we find ourselves bombing Iran.  Ahmadinejad, is Argo in your Netflix queue?   

So then perhaps the only real surprise of the night (Argo came into the Oscars the odds on favorite for Best Picture) was when the honestly nice, sweet, talented (and with many, many Oscars/nominations in her future) Jennifer Lawrence won the Best Actress in a Leading Role Award (for her nice sweet role in Silver Linings Playbook) over similarly prolific/talented Jessica Chastain's Award-deserving performance in Zero Dark Thirty completing Zero's near complete shutout.

Indeed, I wonder what the award's going to do to Jennifer Lawrence's career now as the roles that I thought she was at her best were in the X-Men: First Class [2011] and the House at the End of the Street [2012] to say nothing of The Hunger Games [2012].   Is she going to be "too good" for those kind of roles now?  (That would be a shame and a waste of her youth).   And Jessica Chastain was certainly no "one note schmuck" either, having played varied and Award caliber roles in The Tree of Life [2011], The Debt [2011], The Help [2011], Take Shelter [2011] and even Lawless [2012].

The rest of the Awards seemed to me to be scattered rather fairly among a remarkably diverse and competitive field: Both Christoph Waltz (in Django) and Daniel Day Lewis (in Lincoln) certainly deserved their awards even as they edged-out other actors who gave similarly outstanding performances.  Anne Hathaway won the Best Supporting Actress award for her performance as Fantine in Les Miserables [2012].  She was outstanding but also certainly the safer choice to Helen Hunt's equally outstanding, if far more challenging, performance as a "sex-surrogate" in The Sessions.

While Ang Lee (Life of Pi) was certainly a worthy choice in the very competitive category for Best Director this year, I do wonder if Steven Spielberg (Lincoln) wonders now if he'll ever win another Best Director award.  I was mildly surprised that Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained) won the award for Best Original Screenplay, though his award here might have been in partial compensation for not giving him the award a number of years back for his equally original Inglourious Basterds [2009].  The Best Adapted Screenplay Award going to Argo was not surprising as it was destined to win Best Picture as well.

That various make-up and staging awards went to Les Miserables [2012] and Anna Karenina [2012] seemed appropriate as these aspects of the films made these versions of the two stories distinct from the others that preceeded them.

Another mild surprise was the Bond movie Skyfall's winning of two Academy Awards (Best Original Song and Sound Editing). Live and Let Die [1973] famously won an Academy Award for Paul McCartney's original song for that film.  However, generally Bond films are generally passed-over at the Oscars.  Perhaps this year, because it was the 50th anniversary of the first Bond film, Dr No [1962], was exceptional.  However, I do wish that Judy Dench and Javier Bardem (Spanish accent and all...) had gotten nominations for their performances in the current Bond film.

The "show" itself went quite well.  Highlights for me were the tribute to Hollywood musicals of the last 10 years especially when the cast of this year's Les Miserables [2012] came out to sing "One More Day" burying any lingering question about whether the cast was really up to the task of singing in the film and then Seth MacFarlane and "On the Red Carpet" pre-Oscar Show's Kristin Chenoweth tribute "To the Losers" at the end of the show ;-).  Lyrics like: "This to those who're wearing fake smiles now and wondering why they went out and got dressed for this thing" deserve their due credit. ;-).

I'm also happy that the Independent Spirit Awards [2013] given out earlier in the weekend gave The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Safety Not Guaranteed their just due... There are _many_ films that come out each year that are excellent and don't find recognition at the Oscars.

So all in all, in what was a rather competitive year at the Oscars this year, most of the films and performances nominated were given their just due.  Still I remain in my conviction the Academy is actually far more "middle of the road" / "safe" than most critics (especially on the Right) give it credit for.  But then, given the Academy's size and breath, can one really expect it to be anything else?


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John Dies at the End [2012]

MPAA (R)  Chicago Sun-Times (2 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
Chicago Sun-Times (C. Schmidlin) review

John Dies at the End (screenplay and directed by Don Coscarelli based on the novel by David Wong) is an "indie" young adult oriented zombie/alien-invasion horror comedy about two friends Dave (played by Chase Williamson) and John (played by Rob Mayes) from somewhere in the United States who find themselves inadvertently opening the doors for an inter-dimensional alien invasion of earth, spending much of the movie trying really, really hard to close it.

How could two very average young 20-somethings from "anywhere USA" possibly mess-up so badly as to put the whole world in such peril?   Well after inviting journalist Arnie Blondestone (played by Paul Giamatti) to meet him in a random Chinese take-out restaurant somewhere in town, Dave explains to Arnie that "well there was this party ..." At this party (just like any other party...) there was this "young Jamaican dude" going by the name of Robert (Bob...) Marley (played by Tai Bennett) who had this "supply of pills" he called "the sauce."  Well these pills made one see things that one otherwise would never be to see.  The problem is ... that the things that one was suddenly able to see were actually quite real (and quite sneaky as they would shape-shift and so forth) and then really hungry/mean.  More to the point they came from another dimension and were bent on ravaging/destroying the earth.  Oh dear ...

From the party onward, Dave and his friend John had spent their time fighting an increasingly desperate battle of beating back this really odd alien invasion that only they and an otherwise very small group of people could see.  Strangely enough, the only person these beings from another dimension seemed to really fear was a white leisure suit clad Italian celebrity psychic named Dr. Albert Marconi (played by Clancy Brown) who could exorcise these inter-dimensional aliens and send them back to their world just by talking to them on the phone.  The rest of humanity either could not see these beings (until it was too late...) or somehow came to be "in league" with them.  The only other character who seemed to come around to believing the two's story was a Catholic school educated police detective (played by Glynn Turman) who despite initially disbelieving Dave and John's story when he first encountered them, nevertheless "came around" as the number of otherwise unexplainable happenings taking place the two 20-somethings mounted.  "I may not know much about these sort of things, but my Catholic school upbringing helps to know Evil when I see it," and so the detective joins the fight on Dave and John side.

It all makes for a goofy and at times "strange things going splat" sort of story.  But my sense is that a lot of young people and otherwise those with a somewhat "off" / "slacker" sense of humor would enjoy it.

Since we're still all here, it would appear that Dave and John "won" their battle ;-).

Finally the film may actually have something of an "edifying message" for young people by the end: Be careful what you try 'cause something that may seem innocuous enough could really, truly bring about (or at least bring you) "a world of pain."

Who would have thought that John's taking of a single pill would have (in Dave's own words to the journalist)  "opened the gates to the Apocalypse" ;-) gates that both Dave nor John were never really sure that they were able to close again. (And boy, were they really, really apologetic about that ;-)

This was one strange and often very funny film ;-).


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Bless Me, Ultima [2013]

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

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review
La Opinion-Los Angeles (EFE) [ESP][ENG-trans]

Bless Me, Ultima (directed and screenplay by Carl Franklin, based on the novel by Rudolfo Anaya) is a lovely, if at times also challenging story about a 7 year old Mexican-American boy named Antonio Mares (played by Luke Ganalon) growing-up in the llano (prarie/flatlands) of New Mexico during the latter stages of World War II.  (When the story begins, his three older brothers are all still serving in the war, and early on in the tale an incident happens in town involving another fairly young Mexican-American veteran who had just come home from the conflict).

As the story begins, Antonio's mother Maria Luna-Mares (played by Dolores Heredia) asks her husband/his father Gabriel Mares (played by Benito Martinez) if a curandera (native healer) and somewhat distant relation of her family-of-birth, the Luna family, named Última (played by Miriam Colon) could come and live with them.  Última had been present (as a midwife) at the birth of all their children, was a relative, and now in her old age, didn't really have a place to live (Why? Though left unclear in both the book and the movie, it probably had something to do with her being a curandera, which to many in the community made her something of a bruja (or witch), something that Última adamantly denied).  Not particularly excited, Gabriel nevertheless accedes to his wife's request.

Though there is reference to this in the latter stages of the movie, the difference in temperament Antonio's parents' families of birth, the Luna and the Mares families, is very clear in the book.  The Luna (meaning Moon) family was both far more religious (Catholic) and much more tied to the land (hence, why there'd be a native/natural healer like Última among them).  Antonio's uncles from the Luna side of the family were all peaceful, tranquil farmers.  In contrast, the Mares (or "of the seas") family of Antonio's father were all "unsettled" vaqueros (cowboys) who were never really happy where they were.  At the beginning of the film, Antonio's father was waiting impatiently for the older sons to come back from the war, so that he could move the whole family to California.  When the three older sons returned, he found to his dismay that they all had their own plans none of them involving either California or the llano of New Mexico, but rather to set-off to "the (bigger) city" (Santa Fe) to find work there....

Interestingly enough, the Luna family had no trouble at all melding their Catholic faith with presumably pre-Catholic (pagan) traditions of the pre-Columbian past.  In a lovely passage in the book, Antonio equates the moon (Luna) with its "horns" with Our Lady of Guadalupe (who in the traditional iconography stands gently on top of a horned moon.  The iconography works excellently in Catholic spirituality as well as it evokes the "woman clothed in the sun with the moon at her feet" of Revelation 12:1).  In contrast, Antonio's father and older brothers, all with a distinctly Mares family outlook, appear far more skeptical/worldly than the tranquil Luna family.  (It's clear in the book, less so in the movie, that Antonio initially prefers his mother's Luna family outlook to his father's ... but in both the book and the film, as the story progresses he also he starts to better understand his father's outlook as well).

Antonio was seven when the story started.  In the Catholic world, it follows then that a good part of the story would necessarily involve his preparing to receive First Communion.  Now Antonio lived in an overwhelmingly Mexican-American (hence overwhelmingly Catholic) community.  But the community was not entirely Mexican-American or entirely Catholic.  The town's parish priest, Fr. Byrnes (played by David Rees Snell), is "Anglo," and while perhaps sounding somewhat gentler than he would have sounded if he was stationed in a more "Anglo" dominated parish of the era, (as played in the movie) he still sounded discordingly harsh for the community to which he was speaking to.  Yet, certainly, that would have been how an Anglo-priest of the time would have sounded like: "If you die with mortal sin on your soul, you will go to hell and burn in hell for eternity," he unhesitatingly tells his 7-8 year old First Communion class with no "ands, ifs or buts" about it.

The problem was that there was the Anglo-looking boy named Florence (played by Deigo Miró) who was attending the class not because he wanted to make First Communion (he was a strange/somewhat heretical "Protestant" as some of Antonio's classmates had found out about him) but because as an orphan (both his parents died tragic deaths) he just "didn't want to be alone."  So even if he didn't want to make First Communion and insisted at a practice "First Confession" that he didn't sin against God but that God had sinned against him, he doggedly insisted on attending the class with the others, because he considered Hell to be "being alone."  (Doesn't one just want to cry hearing that... ;-(.

Anyway, much happens in the story, much of it involving Última, the curandera, who's always suspected of being something of a witch even though there are true witches (three daughters of a rancher, who did actually make a pact with the Devil and at one point cursed one of the Luna family uncles who falls sick shortly afterwards.  After the priest had come to bless his house but failed to cure him, Última had to come in to reverse the curse).  Última always insisted that she was on the side of Good and of God and the whole Luna family had no problem in living-out their Catholic faith in harmony with their pre-Columbian native roots.

This theme of living in peace with Christianity and pre-Christian native/land respecting paganism would probably pose a challenge to a fair number of contemporary American viewers.

Yet, I think I honestly understand it, because though I come from a Slavic (mostly Czech but also part Russian) background, my grandmother, who I knew well, was still "born in the village" in picturesque, forested, rolling-hilled Bohemia.   She came from a village where the picturesque village Church (Catholic, as a matter of course) stood (dedicated to the Assumption) on top of a hill for nearly 1000 years.  At every crossroad, meadow or forest where anything ever happened (even if it happened 500 years ago) there's a cross or a chapel, and every rock, lake and tree of note has a story.  Every good Czech with any connection with his/her pastoral past, still knows how to pick mushrooms (which ones are edible, which ones are not) and most know their berries as well.  Catholicism and the traditions of a native central European (hence generally Slavic) pre-Christian paganism extending so far back that no one knows where some traditions even come from have lived there in peace since time immemorial as well.  And the Irish would know of this kind of pastoral communion as well.

Indeed, as I watched this film and then quickly read the book on which it is based, I could not help but be reminded of a book that I read (in Czech, every day, page by page) with my grandmother as a child called Školák Kája Mařík (Schoolboy Charlie Marik) about a boy exactly Antonio's age, growing-up in rural Bohemia pretty much at the same time (though necessarily before the war).  I've long wondered if I should set-out to translate that book (only 130 pages) into English because it could give millions of American Catholics often disconnected from Slavic pasts (not just Czech but Slovak, Polish, Ukrainian, Ruthenian, Croatian or Slovenian) a window into where their families came from and to see that past as not necessarily being just "sad" or otherwise "bad."  (I offer a rough translation of the first chapter of Schoolboy Charlie Marik here).

In any case, Bless me, Ultima as either book or film offers the contemporary Catholic, be he/she Hispanic, Irish or Slavic much to think about and perhaps, like the more pastoral Luna family of the story, an opportunity to find a great deal more peace.  It's a GREAT STORY.


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