Thor: The Dark World [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (2 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Adams) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Thor: The Dark World [2013] (directed by Alan Taylor, screenplay by Christopher L. Yost, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, story by Don Payne and Robert Rodat, based on the Marvel comic by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby) is the latest installment in Marvel Studios' emerging  Avenger Cinematic Universe.  The Thor comic-book character (as well as his kin/companions from his home world of Asgard is inspired by Norse Mythology with some significant updating.

The most important difference between the Thor of Norse-mythology and the Thor of the Marvel universe [IMDb] [wikip] is that Thor and his kin/companions in the Marvel universe are no longer Gods, but rather powerful beings that live in another realm (the above mentioned Asgard) and keep the other 8 realms, including Earth, in order.  Their interventions (for the sake of Cosmic order/peace) make them act sort of like Gods, BUT they are not immortal, that is, they can die.  Since Marvel's Thor (played in the last several films by Chris Hemsworth) is NOT a god but a very powerful being (a superhero) he is then able to interact with the other superheroes of the Avenger Universe.  Hence he and his adopted/step-brother Loki [wikip] [IMDb] (played in the last several films by Tom Hiddleston) played significant roles in last year's Avengers [2012] ensemble film (Indeed, Loki [wikip] [IMDb] had been that film's principal villain).

The distinctive difference between Thor / Loki and the other Avengers is that Thor / Loki and their Asgardian kin/companions are from another world and they do fight forces that are more fundamental to the peace/order of the universe than the more technology based Avenger/superheroes of earth.  But they are able to interact.  So superhero/demi-god Thor [IMDb] [wikip] from a world where "magic and technology are the same thing" was able to meet and impress Jane Foster in the original comic a nurse who tended to Thor when he had been banished from earth and in the movies an astrophysicist (played superbly in the film by Natalie Portman) studying wormholes who encounters the banished Thor in the first installment of his "marvelous cinematic saga" one night out in the New Mexico desert, when Thor appears to have "dropped out of the sky" via one of those wormholes that she and her assistants Darcy (played by Kat Dennings) and Dr Erik Selvig (played by Stellan Skarsgård) were "studying."  Much ensued then ... and much, of course, takes place now.

In the current film, the enemy that Thor as well as the other Asgardians led by Thor's father Odin [wikip] [IMDb] (played in these films by Anthony Hopkins), the King of Asgard, fight are the "dark elves" who (in the story) existed BEFORE the current Universe with its 9 realms (of which Earth and Asgard are two) existed, and who wanted to destroy now the Universe and all said realms to return all things to that state of Primordial Darkness.  Well, Odin, king of the Asgardians, the awesome but also benevolent guardians of the 9 realms could not let that stand.  So much, much Epic Nordic style battling ensues.

The constant battling _could_ become unsettling to a fair number of Catholic/Christian viewers especially those remembering that a lot of the Nazis, including SS-commander Heinrich Himmler, were fanatical neopagans who glorified incessant battling that existed in the Nordic/Viking sagas.

There is, further, a somewhat unsettling "swipe" arguably taken against Judeo-Christian religion in the current film when early-on Thor is portrayed as swinging his legendary hammer in the manner of a sling to make short work of the champion of a race of  Stone Giants.  Super-hero/Demi-God Thor, having destroyed the Stone Giant with a single swing of his hammer smiles and smugly asks "any others?"  The giants seeing their champion vanquished in a single blow lay down their arms and run.  The borrowing of motifs from the Biblical story of David, a lowly teenage (youngest) son of a nobody shepherd, taking down the Philistine Giant Goliath with a single shot from his sling (1 Samuel 17) could not be more obvious.  (The crucial differences in the stories is this -- Thor was a DemiGod/Superhero while David was a little nobody who had only his own bravery and the Biblical God on his side).  Thor acts regally and with a smile, as a confident DemiGod/superhero of his type would ... but for those of us trying really hard NOT to see in homages to the Nordic Paganism of the goosestepping of Nazis, THIS SCENE seemed stupidly provocative (and added nothing essential to the story ...).

On the plus side, viewers do get to see the ceremonial awesomeness of a Viking style funeral after Thor's mother/Odin's wife Frigga [wikip] [IMDb] played by Rene Russo) dies following an attack by the "dark elves" on Asgard.

All in all, there is much battling, much often amusing and sometimes quite awesomely depicted traveling "between the realms" via worm-holes with the FATE OF THE UNIVERSE AT STAKE ... ;-) ... making for a quite enjoyable teen / young-adult oriented movie.  It's just that someone like me (both one of Czech descent whose parents lived under the Nazis and one who is now a Catholic priest) does start to wonder how close are we getting with a film like this to goose-stepping Nazis firebombing "enemies."  After all, Hitler's architect Albert Speer's planned "Hall of the Nations" for downtown Berlin "after the Nazis had won" could have easily been as awesome as the colossal structures of the "benevolent guardians" of Asgard portrayed in the film.

A still fun but at times somewhat disturbing film ...


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Big Sur [2013]

MPAA (R)  RE.com (2 Stars)  SlantMagazine (1 1/2 Stars) AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
RE.com (S. O'Malley) review
Slant.com (D.L. Dallas) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review

Big Sur [2013] (screenplay and directed by Michael Polish, based on the novel by Jack Kerouac [IMDb-nm]) is the second Kerouac novel to made into a movie in a year, the other being the (young) star studded but not particularly acclaimed On The Road [2012].  (That so many films about the post-WW II / "beatnik" era have come out in the past year or two has fascinated me.  Besides these two films there have been a documentary Salinger [2013] about that famed post-WW II writer's life, the recently released Kill Your Darlings [2013] about future Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg's formative time at Colombia University in New York during WW II, and even The Master [2012] loosely based on Scientology founder L.R. Hubbard's rise to prominence (also) in the years immediately following WW II).

The current film, Big Sur [2013], seems destined to receive the same tepid critical response (see above) as On The Road [2012] did, even if I honestly liked both films (and I can attest that both films stuck very close to the books).

It would seem that those film-makers wishing to put Kerouac's novels on screen face a similar challenge as Peter Jackson, et al had when they embarked on putting J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved Lord of the Rings trilogy onscreen -- a cadre of devoted fans of the books.  HOWEVER (and not particularly surprisingly when one thinks about it) the two sets of fans appear to be quite different.  It would seem that Tolkien fans are often fantasy-gamers, hence often quite at home with the CGI of fantasy video-games.  The challenge that Jackson, et al faced when making the LotR films was making the CGI, costuming, etc, meet (and exceed) the bar set by said video-game adventures.  In contrast, one would expect that Kerouac fans would be largely "hippies," predisposed to be weary of technology.  So while there would be no need at all for any "special effects" in filming the very, very human/earthy stories of Kerouac's books, I'm not surprised that so many Kerouac fans would cling to the view that his works are simply "unfilmable."

Yet there have been all kinds of other works by all kinds of other authors -- think of  Charles Dickens [IMDb], Victor Hugo [IMDb], Jane Austen [IMDb], Leo Tolstoy [IMDb], Fyodor Dostoyevsky [IMDb], John Steinbeck [IMDb], Ernest Hemingway [IMDb], Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind [1939]) heck even Mickey Spillane [IMDb], Stephen King [IMDb] and  J.K. Rowling (the Harry Potter series), etc, etc -- that have been successfully put on the screen.  So I do believe that there's a certain quaint arrogance in maintaining that one's favorite author's works are "untranslatable" to the screen.

So take a step-back folks, both On The Road [2012] and the current Big Sur [2013] do the works remarkable justice.  And would you prefer that Kerouac's books NOT BE KNOWN by young people today?  A fair number of Hollywood's young actors/actresses have "stepped-up" to play in the recent screen adaptations of his books (Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst and Amy Adams in On The Road [2012], and Kate Bosworth here.  Additionally, Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame played in the recent Kill Your Darlings [2013] about Allen Ginsberg).  It'd be a shame if their efforts were ignored or put-down by aging, silver-haired and perhaps even somewhat misguided/confused "purists."

The curent film, Big Sur [2013], like Kerouac's (ever semi-autographical) book, takes place around 1960, three years after the publication of On The Road, which propelled him to sudden fame.  Fundamentally an introvert, the experience of fame proved to him to be a crushing burden.  Finding himself out West after doing an interview on the Steve Allen Show in Los Angeles, a friend (Lawrence Felinghetti [IMDb] played in the film by Anthony Edwards) owner of a San Francisco bay-area book store offers Kerouac [IMDb] played in the film by Jean Marc Barr) the chance to go spend some time at a cabin in nearby Big Sur.  (Note here: In the book, Kerouac gives himself and most of the other persons in the story pseudonyms.  For instance, Kerouac's pseudonym in the book is Jack Dulouz.  The film, however, dispenses with the pseudonyms and calls the characters by their actual names).  Though wanting to escape the burdens of public notoriety, he soon finds the solitude at the cabin crushing as well.  Thus most of the story takes place both at the cabin as well as among friends in the early-1960s Bay Area, in particular with Neal [IMDb] and Carolyn Cassady [IMDb] (played by Josh Lucas and Radha Mitchell respectively) of On The Road [wiki] [IMDb] fame as well as with Neal's on-the-side girlfriend Billie (played magnificently in the film by Kate Bosworth) who becomes Kerouac's girlfriend for much of the film.

By its nature, semi-autobiographical, the story is definitely on the narcissistic side.  This may actually be an interesting characteristic (and criticism...) of both the Beat Generation writers' focus (on themselves) AND of our own time in general (again focused on individual personal fulfillment).  Yet Kerouac's saving grace in his writing could be that he doesn't portray himself (nor most of his friends) particularly positively.  He portrays himself as a very fearful person (at one point Billie calls him an "f-ing neurotic") famously preferring "the road" to commitment and living as an alcoholic or drunk (again another form of escape...).  Neal, of course, is portrayed as a philanderer and a bum (he can't seem to hold onto a job).  Interestingly the women, Carolyn and Billie, are portrayed as being far more sensible, even if from the time  Kerouac meets Billie, he seems convinced that Billie must have "issues" as well (she does, or certainly comes to have them, but then so do we all...).  It all makes for a very interesting "snap-shot" of life that a lot of young people (On The Road [wiki] [IMDb]) and middle-aged people (Big Sur [wiki] [IMDb]) could understand.  Indeed, part of what makes Kerouac so interesting today is that though he wrote about his circle of "beatnik" friends in the late-1940s/early-1950s (On The Road [wiki] [IMDb]) and then in the late-50s/early-60s (Big Sur [wiki] [IMDb]) both of his books written at that time feel so surprisingly current today.

A word about the cinematography.  Big Sur is one of the most beautiful parts of the United States and hence also the world.  Director Michael Polish certainly takes advantage of that by contrasting the serene and at times awesome beauty of the cliffs, the surf, the clouds, the fog with the obvious inner restlessness of Kerouac.  It's obvious in the story that he has "trouble" with serenity.  In the first part of the story, he can't stand the insistent rhythms of nature (the surf, the fog) around him.  In the latter part of the story, when it shifts attention from the natural beauty of Big Sur to the tranquil physical beauty of Kerouac's new-found if, alas, doomed-to-be-temporary girlfriend Billie (who both when clothed ... and Parents take note ... when not clothed ... actress Kate Bosworth plays superbly), Kerouac again can't bring himself to say "yes" to the gentle tranquility, beauty and stability that she could have offered him.  Instead, Kerouac seemed most happy drinking and carousing with the friends of his past.

Kerouac's attitude here actually reminds me of another famous slacker, singer Jimmy Buffet, who like Kerouac grew up to "not be a particularly great or traditional Catholic" and Buffet's song "Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude," where he sings of himself as another guy who can't really keep still.  Still there is clearly something Eucharistic in the "Party with Friends."  (Jesus compares the Kingdom of God dozens of times in the Gospels to a "wedding banquet" ... Now of course, too much of any good thing, like alcohol, etc ... becomes a problem and hence sin.  Perhaps though, Kerouac's story of his time at Big Sur shows that even Nature without the Communion of Friends becomes empty). 

Finally, a number of the reviewers (see above) found irritating director Polish's heavy leaning on voice-over by Jean Marc Barr (who plays Kerouac in the film).  The voice-overs are passages taken directly from the book and they do help explain what's going-on in the scenes playing out on-screen.  Given that I loved the book, I do believe that the voice-overs did serve the film quite well.  The wood chopping scene, for instance, in which a fair number of Kerouac's friends visiting him at the cabin take turns chopping wood, where Kerouac muses in voice over with the text taken directly from the book: "I have long thought that one could learn a great deal about the character of a person from the way he chops wood..." would have been infinitely harder to express without the explanatory voice over than with it.  And there are many similar instances where the voice-over made the scene work (or work much better) than without it.

All in all, loved both the book and the film and was happy that the film was made.  Both book and film offer much to think about.  So good job folks, good job!


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Kill Your Darlings [2013]

MPAA (R)  RedEyeChicago (3 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
RedEyeChicago (Matt Pais) review
RE.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Kill Your Darlings [2013] (directed and co-written by John Krokidas along with Austin Bunn) is the second of three films about Beat-Generation to come-out in the United States in a year's time. The other two films, On The Road [2012] and Big Sur [2013], have attempted to put those two beloved beat/"hippie" generation tomes by Jack Kerouac on the screen.

A FASCINATING QUESTION TO ASK WOULD BE WHY?  Why such an interest in the Beat Generation NOW?   My sense is that this renewed interest in that period is the result of a similarity of both the times -- the current film takes place during the closing stages of World War II and Kerouac's novel On The Road took place during the years immediately following that war, while today, we are winding down a decade of the War on Terror.  Readers here should remember also both Pearl Harbor that brought the U.S. into World War II and the 9/11 attacks in 2001 were experienced in the U.S. as shocking events that all but necessitated the massive military responses that followed.  However, wars do come to an end.  Those wounded by the war do come back.  And national priorities do change then as well, as the nation seeks to "decompress," treat the wounded, and return to normal.  There's a lot of pain described in these Beat-Generation / Post-WW II works that many folks today would recognize as something akin to societal "Post Traumatic Stress" and then as remarkably "close to us" now, certainly more comprehensible than say 20-30 years ago (pre-9/11 / War on Terror).  Then thematically, the similarities between the concerns of the Beat-Generation writers (restlessness/escape through drugs/sexuality including homosexuality, or just simply "hitting the road") and those of the general culture today are striking.  So the interest in the Beat-Generation today is IMHO not altogether surprising and perhaps even inevitable.

Okay, Kerouac's [IMDb] On the Road [film] is set in the late 1940s, and Big Sur [film] in the late 1950s.  Kill Your Darlings [2012] is centered on Kerouac's [IMDb] fellow Beat-Generation poet/friend/acquaintance Allen Ginsberg's [IMDb] freshman year at Colombia University in New York in 1943.  Hence it is set before the Kerouac's semi-autographical books.  For this reason the AVClub's reviewer A.A.Dowd amusingly called the film "Beat Generation: 1st Class" (in reference to the X-men "prequel" film released a few years back.  Have to give credit where credit is due ;-).

The film presents young Allen Ginsberg [IMDb] (played in the film by ex-"Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe) as leaving a fairly troubled home in New Jersey as enters Colombia U.  His mother (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) is borderline schizophrenic.  His father, poet Louis Ginsberg (played by David Cross), turns out to be carrying on an affair.

When he gets to Colombia, he finds himself gravitating to basically misfits and trouble-makers.  To some extent given the time this should not be surprising: (1) WAR WAS GOING.  In 1943 pretty much ANY MALE of Ginsberg's age who could serve WAS SERVING in the war.  So among those who were not serving would have been a disproportionate number of problematic people: "misfits and troublemakers" and (2) WAR WAS GOING ON.  The regimentation that the waging of War almost necessarily requires, the (temporary) ascendancy of Order over Freedom, necessarily breads a seething resentment that finds expression in various anti-social behaviors -- both more "fight" (a perhaps greater sensitivity to perceived offenses) and more "flight" (though all kinds of escapist strategies -- sex, drugs, rock and roll (at that time, jazz)).  So it doesn't surprise me that the  rather young and still naive Ginsberg would find himself a perhaps abnormally large number of abnormally sensitive classmates "with issues" and perhaps enough of them to find a "critical mass" to "start a movement."

And this then is what appears to happen.  Congregating around a rather troubled (and perhaps not particularly talented outside of _recognizing talent in others_ and organizing) sophomore Lucien Carr (played by Dane DeHaan) is this group of misfits/outsiders which comes to include Ginsberg (Jewish from New Jersey), a young, blue collar Jack Kerouac (a transplant from French speaking Quebec with a brother "in the war" and not even a student at Colombia but someone who Lucien knew clearly could write), rich-kid William S. Burroughs [IMDb] (played by Ben Foster) who appeared to spend most of his time figuring out new ways to get high using commonly available chemicals and finally David Krammerer (played by Michael C. Hall) a former Lit Professor of a few universities of Carr's past, who lost everything, from his position to his marriage/family after falling in love with Carr.  By the time of the movie, Krammerer was reduced to working as a janitor somewhere in New York, just so that he could be "close to Carr."  And Carr would have Krammerer write his assignments for him ... in return for ... well ...

Eventually this group decides to "fight the Fascism" of the Literature Department at Colombia: "Why must poetry have to have rhyme and meter?" Ginsberg asks his sonnets professor.  "Well, first, imitation precedes creation, and second, your own father Louis Ginsberg does quite well keeping himself within the bounds of rhyme and meter" the professor responds.  "Well, that's because its _easier_ to write poetry by staying within the bounds."

What follows then is the founding of what RedEye Chicago reviewer Matt Pais called a "Live Poets Society" ;-) among those above mentioned "misfits" who later became the Beat movement.

A lot of self-destructive behavior follows as this group appears to reject the professor's slogan "imitation precedes creation" for the slogan of most modern revolutions "to create one must first destroy."  (Note: As the son of Czech immigrants well versed in the stories of the past often involving tanks and concentration camps, and as a Catholic priest and believer in the Second Vatican Council, I honestly reject both slogans.  To destroy the past is simply stupid and arguably evil.  But as Bl. John XXIII soon to be Saint John XXIII said in his calling for the Second Vatican Council: "We are not here to be curators of a museum but to cultivate a flourishing garden of life."  We can build and expand on the past rather than destroy it)

Still this movie is a very good and thought provoking one and I would recommend the film to college students and above (I don't see ANY reason why a minor would "need to see" this film).  Allen Ginsberg [IMDb] was both a Beat Generation Poet and a homosexual.  The film offers insight as to how/why he became both.

But I return to the point I just made: Ginsberg may have been right that it is "easy" to "remain within the lines."  However, it's also far easier to destroy something old than to build something (of value...) that is new.

Nevertheless as a thought-provoking piece, this is a VERY GOOD AND TIMELY FILM.  And also Good Job Harry Potter, good job, certainly a serious movie here.


ADDENDUM:

An interesting article on the American writers of the Post-WW II era, paying special homage to the American Catholic hero/mystic of the time, Thomas Merton, would be: Three American Sophomores: the Restlessness of Thomas Merton, J. D. Salinger & Jack Kerouac


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About Time [2013]

MPAA (R)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (2 stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

About Time [2013] (written and directed by Richard Curtis) turns out to be IMHO a surprisingly flat romantic comedy even though it involves the generally sure fire "wouldn't it be nice..." device of having one or another character being able to "travel in time."  For "wouldn't it be nice..." to be able to go back to one or another moment in one's life to "fix" (unsay, undo, prevent...) something?  Yet in this film, the potentialities (for good and for ill) of this remarkable (and potentially remarkably practical) superpower remain surprisingly unexplored.

Tim (played by Domhnall Gleesen) is introduced to us as a deathly shy/awkward 21 year-old son of an upper-middle-class to modest-gentry family living at the family's manor house somewhere out at the far south-western edge of England in Cornwall (Incidentally, I've kinda wanted to visit Cornwall because of its remoteness.  The King Arthur legends took place in those "rather remote..." parts of England).  Returning to the story ... Tim's father (played actually remarkably well by Bill Nighy) had been a literature professor at some nondescript college somewhere in England had decided at 50 to retire to said family manor to spend his time with his family.  It was kind of a luxury but the family had some money and his father had clearly (and IMHO quite wisely) decided that chasing after a career (as a literature prof at a not particularly important college or university) wasn't going to give him happiness.

The story begins on the first New Years after Tim's 21st birthday.  New Years comes and passes.  And perhaps typical form Tim "blows it" by not kissing the smiling girl of his age who clearly had lined herself-up to stand right next to him as New Years was about to come, instead choosing to "shake her hand."  Tim realized almost immediately that he had done something stupidly wrong and that he had needlessly hurt this girl who may have been as little interested in him as he in her, but JUST WANTED TO BE KISSED on New Years.  But sigh ... such is the often quite painful life of a painfully awkward geek.

Well the next day and perhaps for motives completely unrelated to Tim's little failure at said party, Tim's father chooses to set Tim down in a backroom / study for a chat.  Thoughts of "Oh boy, what did I do now...?" could have been running through Tim's head at this point.  Yes, he did knock over some plates at the party.  Yes, he didn't kiss the girl.  Yes, he might have done any number of other socially awkward things the night before.  Or perhaps it was something else that he did.  BUT ... Tim's father takes the conversation in a completely different direction:

He tells him that "It's time."  "For what?"  "Time to tell you a family secret."  And the secret was ... that for whatever reason, "the men in the family have this gift of being able to travel back in time."  Here Tim reacts as most of us would react: "Dad, this is beginning of some really strange joke."  "But it's not."  "Even if this were possilbe, which it isn't..." "But it is ..." "How would one do it?"

Tim's father explains.  It's not as if they could go back to any time.  They couldn't go back to the time of the dinosaurs or to Julius Ceasar or whatever.  Neither could they go into future.  BUT they could go back to a particular moment in their lives.  "How?"  "Well go to a closed dark space, close the door, clench your fists and think of a time that you'd like to go back to ... and ... you'll be there."

Well, Tim has an obvious time to go back to test this out.  He goes into a wardrobe, closes the door, clenches his fists and wishes that he could go back to a few minutes before New Years the night before.  And boom, there he is.  He happily avoids running into the plates that he ran into before, goes to the place where he was standing that night before just before midnight (and watches the girl who had come up to stand so next time him the night before do the same now AND just as just as New Years had struck, HE KISSES HER.  She smiles a big smile, he smiles.  And it's done!  Tim goes back to the closet, closes the door, clenches his fists, thinks of the conversation that he's just had with his dad about all of this and ... boom ... he returns back to talk to his dad about this: "This is going to be a very complicated year, dad."  "It's going to be a very complicated life, son."

His dad shares with him a few points of advice ... not to use this ability for financial gain ("I've never known anyone who was truly happy with money.") not to use it for to put off decisions ("Look at ... <name of random uncle> ... who never amounted to anything") and life goes on.

Okay ... how would you use this ability?  That's obviously the central question of the film.  Tim uses this, of course for the sake of love.  And it does help him get the girl-friend and later wife, Mary (played by Rachel McAdams) eho he falls in love with.  But truth be told, her performance throughout the film is rather flat.  She too comes across as a rather anxious person.  So even though he does "win her" as it were, one gets the sense that after meeting 4 or 5 Marys (and "crashing and burning" 4 or 5 times) he probably would have found if not this Mary then someone very much like her anyway.

PERHAPS that is the point here, that Tim's sudden discovery that he had this ability of being able "to go back in time" was really unnecessary APART FROM PERHAPS giving him the confidence to try in the first place.   Anyway, much ensues ... but truth be told, I would have had far more fun (and yes _positive_ fun) with this ability than poor schlop Tim did.

Probably the best part of the movie involves Tim's relationship with his father as both he and his father realize that his father has to die (remember Tim's father's rather odd decision to leave work at 50 ... well ... you put the dots together as to why he made that rather counter-to-expectations decision ... ;-).

And so the film becomes an interesting reflection "about time."  How do we want to make use of the time that we all have.  I just wish that the film-makers took a bit more time to explore more of the possibilities of the film's premise.  It could have made the same point, but been, IMHO, "a lot more fun." ;-)


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Last Vegas [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (D-)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (M. Zoller-Seitz) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Okay, the premise of Last Vegas [2013] (directed by Jon Turteltaub, screenplay by Dan Fogelman) seems like a the beginning of the a joke: So these four "old guys" (with or without the quotes) decide to go to Vegas ... but what actually results is IMHO actually a pretty good story about, yes, "growing old," but also about friendship and coming to terms with who one is, what one's received in life, and the decisions that one has made (and yes, is still making).  So I honestly have to say that I loved the film.

It also helps that the five leads in this film -- the four "old guys" and yes, the lounge singer that they meet along the way (still feels like the beginning of a joke ... ;-) -- are all also "old pros" AND THAT THEY CLEARLY LOVED THEIR PARTS AND BELIEVED IN THE FILM. 

So what's the film about?  It's about four guys who've truly been BFFs since growing up together in Brooklyn, NY (and eons before the world of texting brought us such acronyms as BFF ;-).  Indeed they called themselves the Flatbush Four, and for the most part they've stuck together through thick and thin.  But now they're over 70, and all of them are finding themselves in need of confronting the reality that ahead of them really lie their "sunset years."  So here they are ...

Archie (played by Morgan Freeman) who's found himself in life twice divorced and is now living "somewhere out in the suburbs" with a loving but overly protective son and his family after having suffered a TbtG relatively minor stroke some months back.  There's Sam (played by Kevin Kline) living with his wife of 35-40 years, retired out in Florida, and just having finished physical therapy after getting "a titanium knee replacement" (following the hip replacement he had last year ...).   There's Paddy (played by Robert DeNiro), widowed approaching a year, still living in Brooklyn still distraught over the loss of his wife who had been his high school sweetheart and the only woman he's ever loved, and REALLY, REALLY PISSED OFF that his and his wife's BEST FRIEND of the bunch, Billy (played by Michael Douglas), "couldn't find time to leave his beach house in Malibu" (Billy, never married, but had been the one who made it really, really big) "to come to Suzie's funeral much less GIVE THE EULOGY that Suzie had asked him give because ' he could always make everyone smile.'  Some friend, after all these years ..."

Well, the story really begins with 70 y.o. Billy adjusting his tie in the above-mentioned Malibu beach house, and asking his 31-ish model material girlfriend Lisa (played by Bre Blair) to "please hurry-up" because they were heading to another funeral, that of his business mentor where he was again going to give the Eulogy ... There Billy tells the assembled (sort of) bereaved that said mentor, now dead, had told him that "In life, you'll never grow old as long as you have a REALLY BIG ... ... Malibu beach house."  The people laugh, but looking down at the casket of his business mentor, now dead, the joke no longer seemed overly funny to 70 y.o. Billy.  And so he does something quite surprising (at a funeral, giving the Eulogy ...).  He proposes to his drop-dead gorgeous (did I already note above that she was 31-ish....) Lisa right then and there.  And she, perhaps she really does like older, and (perhaps) still vibrant men says ... (and perhaps SHE REALLY DOES ... in part ...) ... says ... YES!!!

And so it is.  With "not much time to waste ..." there's a quick wedding shower where 70 year old Billy has a rather awkward conversation with the 50-something "Father of the Bride..." ;-) and the wedding's set then for the following weekend.

It's then that Billy calls first Archie, then adds Sam to the call, telling them the news ... and the idea of throwing a Bachelor Party for Billy is conceived.  All three know that Paddy's still really pissed at Billy, but Billy himself tells the other two to do what they can to get Paddy to come because it really wouldn't be the same with out the whole "Flatbush Four" being present.

And so it is ... the story of an epic (and thankfully still PG-13) Bachelor Party is set in motion, one that when they run into above mentioned late-40 something / 50 something lounge singer Diana (played magnificently by Mary Steenburgen), she characterizes as "The First Bachelor Party that she's ever heard of that could be covered by Medicare." ;-) ;-)

Much ensues, and much of it is surprisingly good.  These are five people (both the characters and the actors playing them) who've "been around the block."  Even the problem between Billy and Paddy is multifaceted and its resolution is also surprisingly textured. 

Yes, its a 105 minute or so film (less than 2 hours).  Yes, it's also largely a comedy.  But it is surprisingly credible and poignant and ultimately a celebration of a set of friendships that has really lasted forever.

Honestly folks GREAT JOB!  Together with The Guilt Trip [2012] starring another "old pro" (Barbara Streisand) one could sell the two films as a boxed set!  And honestly though NO ONE really expects this film to be nominated for anything come awards season ... THE SCREEN-PLAY at minimum deserves a look! ;-)


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Free Birds [2013]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-I)  ChicagoTribune (1 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C-)  Fr. Dennis (2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
ChicagoTribune (R. Moore) review
RE.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (K. McFarland) review

Free Birds [2013] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Jimmy Hayward along with Scott Mosier, story by David I. Stern and John J. Strauss) is an often cute, if honestly quite disorganized, children's animated feature sending-up the "First Thanksgiving" taking "the turkeys' point of view."  As such, the story runs like a cross between the second Addams' family feature, Addams' Family Values [1993], which sends-up the First Thanksgiving taking the Native Americans' point of view and the children's animated feature Chicken Run [2000] conflating/sending-up writer George Orwell's famous barn-yard fable Animal Farm [IMDb] and the WW II POW escape classic The Great Escape [1963].

The story here runs like this:  Reggie (voiced by Owen Wilson) a free-thinking turkey if still "bird-brain" (he freely admits that "let's face it, we turkeys are not that bright ...") realizes early in life that Thanksgiving is "a turkey's worst nightmare."  Yet, when he tries to explain to the other turkeys on his farm that their farmer is NOT "their best friend," they look at him with a mixture of incomprehension ("hey, but he gives us, yum, _corn_...") and fear ("are you trying to be some kind of subversive ...").  And he himself sometimes wonders if he's some kind of a crackpot since only the occasional "wild-eyed crazy" turkey would go around telling the other turkeys that "the End is near..." ;-)

Well things change for Reggie when around Thanksgiving suddenly a whole entourage of black limo type cars come to the farm and out comes a really important looking man, the President of the United States (voiced by director Jimmy Hayward) with cameras rolling all around him as part of the "Annual Tradition" of "pardoning" a turkey before Thanksgiving (the rest would, of course, "get the axe.")

Well guess what turkey gets "pardoned?" ;-).  Reggie, of course.  Why Reggie?  Because the President's precocious and somewhat ADD challenged daughter (voiced by Kaitlyn Maher) finds him really, really cute.  So Reggie gets wisked away on the President's helicopter and flown then to the President's retreat at Camp David.

Now what's the life of a "pardoned turkey" at Camp David.  Well, it could have been kinda boring but Reggie makes the best of it.  He starts "ordering pizza" which he finds "way better than corn."  And he gets hooked on a Spanish language Telenovela about a little boy sooo down-on-his-luck/marginalized that he gets thrown out of a Tijuana orphanage before (somehow) growing-up and becoming the richest and most popular man in town.  How?  It's not clear, but what a story!  (Now why was this little and rather strange "Hispanic" bit added to this particular children's animated film?  Again, I have no idea, but perhaps a similarity is being drawn between the "wish fulfillment fantasies" present in some Spanish language Telenovelas and the "wish fulfillment fantasy" playing out here ... even turkeys winning respect and freedom.  But it's an odd/confusing addition potentially equating the plight of many poorer/more marginalized Hispanics today with turkeys.  And I've written before that I often do not like how Hollywood often portrays Hispanics in today's films [1] [2]).

Still, people in general don't fare well in this "turkey drama."  When the film moves on to "the first Thanksgiving" -- how? via a secret "time-machine" being developed by Camp David, the "time-machine'
s" avatar being named "Steve" (voiced by George Takei) -- the Pilgrim settlers are shown to be led by a rather self-serving (and rather well fed while the rest are hungry) Governor Bradford (voiced by Dan Fogler) and his rather sadistic hunter/enforcer Miles Standish (voiced by Colm Meaney).  And even the Native Americans are portrayed as rather dim-witted (they do nothing).  Their chief, Massassoit (voiced by Robert Beltran), has all of one line in the film. Observing _the turkeys_ lining-up to attack the Pilgrim settlement to free their comrades about to be beheaded/plucked/cooked and served for dinner, he tells his fellow warriors: "Those are some angry birds." ;-)

How then to get "turkeys off the menu"?  Reggie comes up with a rather creative (and contemporary solution ;-). 

Anyway, it's a generally happy/goofy story and yet chock full of landmines.  The idea itself was cool, but gosh, I do honestly think I could have come-up with a less problematic/offensive plot-trajectory than this.


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Ender's Game [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  ChicagoTribune (2 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J.P. McCarthy) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Adams) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Ender's Game [2013] (screenplay and directed by Gavin Hood based on the award winning sci-fi novel (wikipedia) by Orson Scott Card [IMDb]) is one of the most thought-provoking sci-fi films to come out in years or perhaps in decades.  Though action and even 3D special effects it has, these are decidedly beside the point.  (Note to Readers, as is almost always my preference, I saw the movie in 2D rather than 3 and the 2D worked just fine).  The film has far more in common in terms of style with Gene Roddenberry's original Star Trek television series, famous/infamous for its spartan sets and lofty thematics/dialogue, than with far more visually oriented sci-fi films ranging from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] and James Cameron's Avatar [2009] where the visuals clearly enhanced and/or arguably _became_ the story or the more recent/flashy StarTrek remakes where the visuals appeared to even try to _mask the lack_ of a compelling story.  

The current film, Ender's Game [2013], is set about a century to century-and-a-half in the future.  We're told in an initial voice-over that 50 years previous the Earth had been suddenly attacked by an ant-like alien race called the Formics that had apparently sought to take the earth as its own.  In the desperate battle that ensued, we're told that tens of millions of people died UNTIL a lone pilot named Mazar Rackham (whose name that every school child around the world now knew) decided to crash his aircraft into the heart of the aliens' mother-ship.  His action not only destroyed the mother-ship, but also (to everyone's surprise) caused the entire alien fleet to stop functioning and simply "fall out of the sky."  Mazar Rackham's action proved a brilliant, "out of the box" and spectacularly effective stroke that saved humanity from destruction.  But ever since humanity has been trying to prepare itself for "Round 2" against this utterly foreign alien species.

How does one prepare to fight an "utterly alien/foreign species?"    That becomes the first "lofty question" posed by the story's scenario.   It seems imperative that the earth's military leaders become nimble, capable of "thinking outside the box" as well as decisive. 

Now who would be best capable of doing this?  The world's leaders become convinced ... children.  Why?  As Col. Graff (played magnificently in the film by Harrison Ford) who appears to head the Earth's chief (and necessarily combined) military academy explains: Children are best able to integrate complex and diverse data and respond to them in surprisingly effective ways.  

But what of the morality of _using_ children in this way (as child warriors)?  "What's going to be left of these [child warriors] afterwards (after the coming next war with the aliens)?" asks Col. Graff's assistant, the psychologist Maj. Gwen Anderson (played again magnificently by Viola Davis).  "What does it matter if there may be nothing left at all?" responds that Colonel in a way that every other Israeli would probably utterly understand.   But that's exactly it.  Almost all of us would be torn here.  Using children's natural capacity to integrate information in novel/effective ways "as they play" into a means to prepare and fight a war seems really, really evil.  On the other hand, the threat is so grave -- possible complete annihilation -- that almost _anything_ goes.

So then Col. Graff and Maj. Anderson along with the rest of the staff at humanity's combined military academy go about training their child warriors and more specifically choosing humanity's future commander for this impending war.  Their focus centers then on a particular child named Ender Wiggin (played by Asa Butterfield) who appears to have been enough of  "a bullied misfit" (bullied but not overly so) to have developed exactly the qualities that they are have been looking for in humanity's next military commander: Someone capable of responding creatively and effectively to threatening challenges.  Can he rise to the challenge?  That's the rest of the film ...

Interesting are Endor's own reflections in which he realizes that to defeat an enemy one has to come to understand him.  But as one comes to understand him, one also comes to love him. 

And that, of course, becomes the final question that the story raises: Does war, in fact, remain "the only way" to respond to a conflict?   Again, the film's repeatedly about "thinking outside the box" and it becomes quite an interesting and thought provoking tale.


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