I'm an Old Communist Hag (orig. Sunt o babă comunistă) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Cinemagia.ro listing*

CineEuropa (S. Dobroiu) review
NextProjection.com (R. Doyle) review

RomaniaLibera.ro (G. Lupu) review*

I'm an Old Communist Hag (orig. Sunt o babă comunistă) [2013] [IMDb] [CM.ro]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Stere Gulea [IMDb] [CM.ro]* along with Lucian Dan Teodorovici [IMDb] [CM.ro]* and Vera Ion [IMDb] [CM.ro]* based on the novel* [review]* by Dan Lungu [en.wikip] [ro.wikip]*) is Romanian comedy that gleefully played recently as part of the 6th Annual Romanian Cultural Marathon organized by the Chicago based Romanian Cultural Exchange (ROCX) at Facet's Multimedia in Chicago. 

Don't let the title fool you.  Though a comedy with a title that could seem on one hand to be dismissive and on the other perhaps rather provocative, this is a very intelligent film.  And I being of Czech parentage (the Czech Republic as part of Czechoslovakia having been, like Romania, part of the old Soviet Communist Bloc), I can assure readers here that the situations / dialogues in this film are very current / real.  

60-year-old Emilia (played magnificently throughout by Luminiţa Gheorghiu [IMDb] [CM.ro]*) is the film's (somewhat reluctantly) self-professed "old Communist hag."  I write that she's "somewhat reluctant" in professing herself as such because she's actually somewhat forced into the declaration at a family get-together following her 30-something daughter Alice's (played by Ana Ularu [IMDb] [CM.ro]*) return with her blond, somewhat boyish-looking American fiancé Alan (played by Collin Blair [IMDb] [CM.ro]*).  Emilia knew from her daughter that she's come back to Romania with her American boyfriend with some financial troubles.  So during the get-together with this in the back of her mind, when the conversation turns to "the bad old days of Communism," she does note that ALL THINGS CONSIDERED there were SOME good things back then as well.  She declares: "Look folks, I / we all had a job, we all had roofs over our heads, and we all had friends (at the factory and at home)." "Come on, you can't be saying that it was all good back then?"  "No I'm not, but IT WAS MY YOUTH and it WASN'T ALL BAD EITHER."  "Oh mom, you've not become an 'old Communist hag.'?"  "Well maybe that's what I've become, but I'M TELLING YOU, IT WASN'T ALL BAD EITHER."

Now AFTERWARDS, we hear Emilia herself reflect on this description: "So THAT'S WHAT I'VE BECOME?  An old Communist hag?  (READERS NOTE HERE, SHE HAD BEEN A PARTY MEMBER...), that's what WE ALL used to call the old Party Apparatchiks." (She herself did not consider herself as such ... though she does explain in the film that yes, she did "join the Party" at some point, but "that's what you did when you were offered a promotion to foreman at the plant."  To get the position, ONE HAD TO join the Party...).

The rest of the film is EXCELLENT, precisely because it DOES NOT portray the Communist Era in "bright shining colors."  In fact, it points out REPEATEDLY HOW CRAZY Romania's Communist Era dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu [en.wikip] [ro.wikip]* was.  For instance in the film, Emilia was repeatedly remembered as "The woman who NEARLY shook the hand of Ceausescu."  Why?  Well, it gets explained: Along with several others at the plant, she was picked by the Plant Manager for this "honor."  HOWEVER, because Ceausescu was absolutely insane, HE was ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED that he'd catch some disease from the people he was put in contact with.  SO good old Emilia and the 4 or 5 others selected from the plant to "shake the hand" of the soon-to-be-visiting Ceausescu WERE PUT INTO ISOLATION (QUARANTINED) FOR 30 DAYS PRIOR to Ceausescu's visit TO MAKE SURE THAT THEY WEREN'T INFECTED WITH ANYTHING.  Then, of course Ceausescu's PLANS CHANGED ... ;-) ... so after 30 days of being in isolation (AS IF THEY WERE ASTRONAUTS OR SOMETHING ...) they didn't get to "shake his hand" ANYWAY ;-)

So this is NOT a pro-Communist film at all.  But I do believe that it articulates the experiences of QUITE A FEW of AVERAGE / RUN-OF-THE-MILL people ALL ACROSS THE FORMER COMMUNIST BLOC (Again, I've heard similar sentiments among SOME Czech family members of my own).  And it's NOT that ANYONE (!!) wants to go back to "Ceausescu" (or ANY the Old Soviet Bloc) but the FREE-MARKET SLOGANEERING OF TODAY SOUNDS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE THE "PROGRESSIVE / SOCIALIST" SLOGANEERING OF THE SOVIET ERA.  Slogans don't employ people, people employ people.

Anyway, "Old Communist" Emilia and her level-headed husband Tocu (played by Marian Râlea [IMDb] [CM.ro]*) has to deal with her unemployed and financially in trouble daughter and her fish-out-of-water American boyfriend ... much ensues ... ;-)


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser.

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The Maze Runner [2014]

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

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

At first glance, The Maze Runner [2014]  (directed by Wes Ball, screenplay by Noah Oppenheim, Grant Pierce Myers and T.S. Nowlin based on the novel [GR] by James Dashner [IMDb]) would appear to be the most "spartan" (in setup...) of the recent teen-oriented standup-and-fight against one-or-another dystopian future that (can) await us (think The Hunger Games [2012], Ender's Game [2013], Divergent [2014] and The Giver [2014] franchises):

In the current film's beginning sequence, we watch Thomas (played by Dylan O'Brian) a teenager, groggy, half-conscious, confused, remembering nothing (at this point) not even his own name, being taken by some kind of an industrial supply elevator up from some kind of subterranean compound "to the surface" (where? neither he, nor we the viewers, know).  He is greeted "at the surface" by a group of some 30 or so other teenage boys, better adjusted to their circumstances, indeed (as we find out) surprisingly organized, yet with some pretty fundamental questions: (1) Again they have no idea where they really are.  Yes, they find themselves in a relatively green and fertile "Garden" of sorts that they call "The Glade," but one which is enclosed by a giant and apparently impenetrable Maze made-up of enormous (and shifting-at-a-whim) concrete blocks, and (2) WHY are they there?  Most believe it's some sort of an (unjust) PUNISHMENT.  However, the outer boundary of their compound being A MAZE rather than a strict WALL suggests some sort of a (rather sick...) TEST. 

The small society of teenage boys has made the best of it.  Again, they've organized themselves, turned part of the Glade into a farm, made shelters (to protect against rain / some cold), and have made some increasingly halfhearted attempts at penetrating the Maze.  Why "increasingly halfhearted"?  Well the entrances into the Maze from the Glade would close at nightfall and anyone trapped still within the Maze faced certain death at the hands of ugly/vicious "Alien/spider-like" creatures called "The Grievers."  So after apparently a number of attempts at finding a way out past the Maze (and losing a number of friends to said "Grievers") the group had largely given-up.

Enter Thomas, who, once he recovered from his initial shock of arriving in this strange "new world" (though he didn't remember next to anything at all of his previous one -- except for some occasional dream imagery that does not make sense to him), immediately seemed "different" to the others who had already been (trapped) in the Glade for some time.  For one, though his recollections of "the Past" were clouded in "dream imagery" at least he had SOME memories at all.  Then two, he seemed far braver / far more "gung-ho" about "finding a way out" than most of the Others who seemed resigned to their relatively comfortable / stable if ultimately rather meaningless Fate of living-out their lives in the Glade.

Enter then, to everyone's surprise, one month after Thomas' arrival to the surface, arrives a teenage GIRL who again comes with little to no memory of her previous life.  However, she comes holding a note in her hand which declares: "She is the last one."  Last one of what?  Is she THE LAST GIRL?  She's actually THE FIRST GIRL in this community of 30 or so teenage boys.  Is she THE LAST PERSON who'll ever arrive in the Glade by way of the supply elevator?  A palpable dread sets in among the thirty or so teenage boys present in the Glade, who had come to expect the arrival every month or so of a newcomer (up to this point, always another teenage boy) along with at least some "hard to grow" supplies.  Now presumably that would end.  Again, why?  No one had a clue.

But Thomas (without ever really knowing why, except perhaps sensing a little bit more the intentions of the unseen Powers who appear to be running this strange world) urges the others to redouble their attempts at getting out of the prison-like if still somewhat comfortable Glade.  Much then ensues ...


I hope that, if nothing else, the above description of the setup of the story is EVOCATIVE of ... a number of things: (1) of the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden, and of the Biblical themes of The Fall and (taking Thomas to be something of a "Jesus figure") perhaps even of the Christian-postulated need on the part of humanity of "assisted Salvation," (2) of William Golding's 1940s-era teenage (boy) oriented novel The Lord of the Flies (about a post-apocalyptic society of teenage boys that disintegrates into savagery and confusion), and perhaps even (3) of Franz Kafka's 1920s-era novel The Castle (where the protagonist was not necessarily trying to flee confinement, but was definitely trying to "reach" said "Castle" where he hoped to talk to "the King"/whoever is "in Charge" to find out why his often admittedly pedestrian questions were not being answered (though his quest progressively became more more urgent / profound as he sought the answer to the most fundamental question: Why was he (the protagonist) "in the Town" at all  Was there a purpose to his presence in the Town or was it all an accident ...). 

In any case, the Maze Runner which plays with A LOT OF THESE THEMES sets up a very interesting allegory that yes, I'd like to see explored further..  and since it is based on the first of a series of books by James Dashner, I fully expect the continuation of this story to unfold on the silver screen in the years to come as well.


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A Walk Among the Tombstones [2014]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChiTrib/Variety (2 Stars)  RE.com (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (2 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
ChicagoTribune/Variety (A. Barker) review
RE.com (G. Kenny) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

The first thing to say about about the hard-boiled, crime drama (set pre-9/11 and "just at the end of the pre-internet age") A Walk Among the Tombstones [2014] (directed and screenplay by Scott Frank, based on the novel by Lawrence Block [IMDb]) is that it's not for the squeamish. This is a definitely appropriately (hard)-R-rated (for violence / gore) Charles Bronson [IMDb] / "Death Wish"-like story involving a alcohol recovering former NYPD detective turned "unlicensed Private Eye" named Matt Scutter [IMDb] (played in excellent, thoughtful, ever calibrated fashion by this generation's "later-in-life tough guy" Liam Neeson) brought reluctantly into a case involving a couple (in more ways than one?) of psychopathic serial killers (played by David Harbour and Adam David Thompson) who prey on the significant women (wives, girlfriends, daughters) of drug dealers, extorting said drug dealers for their money and then sadistically killing, chopping-up and subsequently even "neatly packaging" the chopped-up parts said kidnapped wives, girlfriends and daughters of said drug dealers ANYWAY for the drug dealers to recover.  Yes, folks, this is a brutal story.

The brutality of the story is such that several times during the film, I honestly thought of getting-up and leaving. I've done so -- simply got-up and left -- in cases of various films in the past like famously Killer Joe [2012] and Sinister [2012] and I had thought of doing so while viewing others, including Compliance [2012]. as well.  Why I decided to stay through to the end of this film (and Compliance) while I did not do so in the cases of the other two would be because I saw _significantly more_ going-on in this movie (and Compliance) than just the brutal violence / sexual humiliation, while I honestly did not see much more than that going-on in either the other two films.

So what then would make this film more worthy of watching than, say Killer Joe [2012]? 

Well, first, to some extent the film-maker(s) here were "lucky."  The current film was released in the same month as we, the public, have been forced to deal-with / absorb the video-taping / posting-on-YouTube of three ACTUAL beheadings of innocent hostages by the Syria/Iraq based terrorist group I.S.I.S.  As such, as "over the top" as the brutality of the current film may initially seem, thanks to the (claiming to be "Islamic" group) I.S.I.S., a case could honestly be made here that the current film's brutality "is merely an expression / reflection of the brutality of our times."  Should one necessarily accept that argument?  I'm not saying that, but AGAIN THANKS TO THE THREE VIDEO-TAPED (and PROUDLY posted) BEHEADINGS OF _INNOCENTS_ by the "claiming to be Islamic" group I.S.I.S., the film-makers here have an argument to make ...

Then faced with this shocking-to-the-core crime -- even as it is committed "against the loved ones of drug-dealers (criminals) -- the Alcoholics Anonymous attending former NYPD detective turned "unlicensed Private Eye" Matt Scutter, who FASCINATINGLY is portrayed as taking A.A.'s 12-steps AS SERIOUSLY TO HEART AS SINCERE / BELIEVING CATHOLICS/CHRISTIANS AND JEWS HAVE TAKEN THE TEN COMMANDMENTS in generations past, IS SHOWN SINCERELY REFLECTING THROUGHOUT THE FILM as to HOW TO RESPOND APPROPRIATELY TO THE CRIMES/ EVIL THAT HE HAS BEEN CONFRONTED WITH.

As such, as brutal as this film is (parents, please don't take your kids to this ...) THIS IS NOT A DUMB MOVIE.  This is a very thought-provoking story, written/expressed in the current (A.A. based) parlance / SPIRITUALITY of our times that thanks to "Islamic" groups like I.S.I.S. turns out to be even "more current" than we wish it was.

So while six weeks ago, I would have probably walked-out of this film because of its brutality, thanks to I.S.I.S. I did stay, and came away with the view that the film-maker(s) here did really have something thoughtful to say.

Now could the same message been said without the brutality?  Probably, perhaps even almost certainly, yes.  But thanks to the world's current "faith-based" ("Islamic") groups like I.S.I.S. the filmmakers here produced a film no more brutal than the reality in which we unfortunately live-in today.


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Violette [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  aVoir-aLire.fr (4 stars)  LaCroix.fr (3 1/2 Stars)  FichesDuCine.fr (3 Stars)  LeMonde (3 Stars)  NYTimes (4 Stars)  AVClub (C-)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
Allocine.fr listing*

aVoir-aLire.fr (F. Mignard) review*
LaCroix.fr (A. Schwartz) review*
FichesDuCine.fr (N. Marcadé) review*
LeMonde.fr (F. Nouchi) review*

NYTimes (M. Dargis) review
Variety (S. Foundas) review
Slant (D.L. Dallas) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review


Violette [2013] [IMDb] [AC.fr]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Martin Provost [IMDb] [AC.fr]*, along with Marc Abdelnour [IMDb] [AC.fr]* and René de Ceccatty [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) is a biopic about the literary career of tormented post-WW II French feminist and bisexual author Violette Leduc (1907-1972)[en.wikip] [fr.wikip]*.  The film played recently as at the 2014 Chicago French Film Festival held at Chicago's Music Box Theater a festival cosponsored by the French Diplomatic Mission to the United States.  The film is now available for streaming (subtitled) on Amazon Instant Video.

The story of Violette Leduc (1907-1972)[en.wikip] [fr.wikip]* (played in the film by Emmanuelle Devos [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) may initially surprise the Catholic blog reader.  After all, what could a rather obscure (to an American audience) French woman "of questionable morals" possibly teach us?  A French woman born at the turn of the 20th century, unwanted, to a servant girl out of wedlock, whose first experience of love of any kind occurred between her and a classmate at an all-girls' boarding school where she was sent to hide her (apparently of some means) father's shame ... a school from which she, of course, was subsequently expelled, for said "first experience of teenage (in her situation, necessarily lesbian...) love," and who despite her obvious parental issues and sexual heterodoxy (while never seeing anything to be necessarily wrong with lesbianism, she always understood herself to be bisexual) blamed her extended, life-long bouts with loneliness on her "ugliness."  She claimed, "The only truly mortal sin for a woman is to be ugly, everything else can be forgiven."

After reading THAT introduction, I do believe that any adult of compassion would understand why hers was a story deserved to be told (and deserves to be reflected on).

Indeed, though throughout her life NOBODY apparently really liked her, including her gay faux-husband, writer Maurice Sachs (played in the film by Olivier Py [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) and her perhaps closest confidante, a fellow feminist writer (and existentialist philosopher)  Simone de Beauvoir [en.wikip] [fr.wikip]* (played in the film by Sandrine Kiberlain [IMDb] [AC.fr]*).   Both did encourage her to write, even as BOTH kept themselves at arm-length distance from her: Violette married Maurice TO PROTECT HIM from the gay-persecuting Nazis.  He found her "so needy" that HE LEFT HER ANYWAY to TAKE HIS CHANCES WITH THE OCCUPYING NAZIS ... and was subsequently arrested and taken by the Nazis to work in a forced-labor detail by Hamburg, Germany where he was eventually shot.  Simone, for her part, while encouraging her and using her professional contacts (she knew Albert Camus [en.wikip] [fr.wikip]* and was, for a time, Jean-Paul Sartre's [en.wikip] [fr.wikip]* lover) to make her known among the intellectual community of post-WW II France, pointedly DIDN'T call Violette Leduc her _friend_ IN THE FORWARD SHE WROTE FOR VIOLETTE'S career-making book, her memoir, La Bâtarde (The Bastard) [1964].  Asked about this, Simone apparently did respond: "But I'm _not_ her friend, who really is...?"

Yet, (mild spoiler alert) Violette's finally arrived-at success did give her some means to achieve some degree of happiness EVEN IF STILL LARGELY "IN SOLITUDE": She always seemed happiest out in the country.  With the financial success of her book La Bâtarde and her books that followed, she bought a modest house in Faucune in Provence (Southern France) and lived basically (on her own) "happily ever after."  In an interview about her acquaintance and perhaps mentor (if not friend...) Violette, Simone de Beauvoir [en.wikip] [fr.wikip]* did apparently say: "Perhaps no one has found salvation through writing more than she."

                                                                 *****

As I think of Violette Leduc (1907-1972) [en.wikip] [fr.wikip]*, her struggles and even her loniliness, I can not help but think of an American contemporary of hers who she probably never knew, Dorothy Day (1897-1980) [en.wikip] [fr.wikip]* who spent much of her youth in the 1920s in the American equivalent (Greenwich Village) of the intellectual circles of Paris.  Like Violette Leduc, she too had various early disappointments in life (including an abortion that she quickly regretted) and indeed when Dorothy Day wrote her own memoir, she entitled it, fascinatingly for the discussion here, The Long Loneliness (1952).  When she found herself pregnant and unmarried a second time, Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism and came to found the Catholic Worker Movement which during the Great Depression truly took care of / took in the "poorest of the poor" first in New York City and soon enough across the U.S.  (An excellent movie about this formative period of Dorothy Day's life is Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story [1996]).

While I'm positive that Dorothy Day would not have agreed with everything that Violette Leduc wrote (Dorothy Day apparently famously compared the advent of the birth control pill to the advent of the atom bomb.  Needless to say, she opposed both...), I'm also more-or-less positive that she would have understood her.

As such, while I'm positive that much of Violette Leduc's life would exasperate many Catholic readers here, I do believe that her life, her experiences and her various struggles with both self and society are worthy of consideration by people of faith.  We all see suffering people all the time.  Violette proved to be a remarkably articulate one.  As such, she gives her readers a window into her (and others') pain.  


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser.

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Cantinflas [2014]

MPAA (PG)  RE.com (2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune/LA Times (B. Sharkey) review
RE.com (A. Aradillas) review

LaOpinion-LosAngeles coverage*
Hoy-Chicago coverage*


Cantinflas [2014] (directed and cowritten by Sebastian del Amo along with Edui Tijerina) is a Hispanic family oriented film (the PG rating is absolutely appropriate) about the life of beloved Mexican comic Cantinflas ("Mexico's Charlie Chaplin") [en.wikip] [es.wikip]* [IMDb]. 

Fully bilingual (the parts of story that are in English are presented with Spanish subtitles, the parts in Spanish are with English ones), the film's box-office success (despite having almost NO COVERAGE in the English language press in the U.S. and hence relying almost entirely on Spanish language media for publicity in the U.S.) on the heals of the even more financially successful Instructions Not Included [2013] which utilized the same bilingual formula and also relied on the Spanish media for outreach suggests that Lionsgate Films have found a way of replicating Tyler Perry's [IMDb] success in reaching African American audiences to reach Hispanic audiences here.

While clearly directed to Hispanic families, non-Hispanic audiences could benefit in taking-in this film because it can serve to introduce (or reintroduce) Cantinflas [en.wikip] [es.wikip]* [IMDb] (played in the film by Óscar Jaenada) to them.  For he really was, IMHO, a comic genius.

My first exposure to him was 6 days after arriving in Guadalajara to take an intensive Spanish language course some 15-20 years ago.  Part of taking such a course is not simply learning the language but also to learn about the culture.  Well that day, the instructor brought in a few clips from Cantiflas' circa 1940s films.  The scene that I remember from that day was Cantinflas (who almost always played a "simple Mexican everyman") arriving at a Mexico City pool-hall, late, explaining to his friend what had happened to him: "Well I was walking along the street, making good time, when this lady came running out of a shop, screaming POLICE! POLICE! ..." Well when good old, simple Continflas, calls out "Police! Police!" (while calmly adjusting his pool cue ...) recounting the story, THE CROWDED POOL HALL'S PATRONS just start RUNNING (AWAY) IN EVERY DIRECTION, OUT DOORS, THROUGH WINDOWS, TRYING TO HIDE UNDER / BEHIND POOL TABLES AND CHAIRS, while Continflas, unphased, continues his story, to the horror of his (perhaps also shaking in his boots) friend!

I LAUGH TO THIS DAY recalling of that scene ;-) ... and, thinking of his diminutive posture and manner of motion, remember IMMEDIATELY THINKING "My gosh, THIS GUY'S MEXICO'S CHARLIE CHAPLIN" (which is, in fact, _exactly_ how he is remembered all across the Spanish speaking world).

So I'm happy that this film was made, and I'm also happy that, _more or less_, Cantinflas's [en.wikip] [es.wikip]* personal life was worth remembering _positively_:

Though the film does indicate that when his success did come, he was certainly tempted, and probably (indeed almost certainly) fell in his personal life, he did remain "till death did they part" with his wife, a Russian immigrant to Mexico named Valentina Ivanova (played in the film by Ilse Salas) WHO HE DID LOVE and WHO HE MET VERY EARLY IN HIS CAREER when both were still dirt poor and were (both) working as CIRCUS ACTS.

Indeed, to (North) American audiences perhaps the most controversial scene in the film comes from that early period in his life, when the film shows that Cantinflas BEGINNING his acting career (before that, he tried his hand at both BOXING and BULL FIGHTING ;-) doing a BLACK-FACE ROUTINE (he liked to dance ...) BUT ... (and this is true) HE CAME TO REALIZE VERY QUICKLY THAT HE GOT A LOT MORE LAUGHS FROM HIS MEXICO CITY AUDIENCES WHEN HE SIMPLY PLAYED HIMSELF: A POOR YOUNG STREETWISE MEXICAN MAN WHO WAS "FAST ON HIS FEET" AND EVEN FASTER WITH HIS TONGUE ;-).

To bring the Continflas' story to the States, the current film recalls his participation in the 50's era United Artists (notably the studio CO-FOUNDED BY CHAPLIN) film Around the World in Eighty Days [1956] which won various Academy Awards including Writing and Best Picture and for which Continflas received a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical.

The film recalls the difficulty that producer Michael Todd [IMDb] (played in the film by Michael Imperioli) had in putting together "international cast" to make his film based on Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, including getting Cantinflas to do the film.  Indeed, Todd needed Charlie Chaplin's (played in the film by Julian Sedgwick) help to get Cantinflas to accept.

Why would that be?  Well, the film shows quite well that Cantiflas was an authentic superstar in Mexico by then, and indeed, the head of Mexico's version of the Screen Actors' Guild.  He didn't need to go up the States to play a bit role in some Hollywood film ;-).

All in all, this is honestly a very nice film, again deserving of its family friendly PG rating and one that honestly will put a smile on everybody in the audience's faces (and probably many times ;-)

So good job folks, honestly good job!  And it serves me right.  I have to read the Spanish papers here more often ;-)


* Reasonably good (sense) translations of non-English webpages can be found by viewing them through Google's Chrome browser.

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The Drop [2014]

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

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


The Drop [2014] (directed by Michaël R. Roskam, screenplay by Dennis Lehane based on an earlier short story of his) is IMHO an excellent, well written / well acted, starting out low key but steadily building (until an inevitable climax) crime drama set around a neighborhood bar in Brooklyn, New York.

The central (certainly at least partly "mythic") device around which the story is built is that of "The Drop" (which, of course, is the film's title). We're told in a voice-over by "Bob" the film's central protagonist / seeming "mild-mannered everyman" bartender (played with near perfectly calibrated precision throughout the whole of the film by Tom Hardy) at a neighborhood tavern nominally owned by his once (and still?) ambitious older cousin Marv (played by James Gandolfini) that:

"(In Brooklyn) every night, a lot of money changes hands, the kind of money that can't be reported but must go somewhere, and where it goes is to a 'Drop Bar,'"

The Drop Bar is where the neighborhood's questionably acquired money is collected, stored and eventually picked up the neighborhood's (mob) powers-that-be.  We're also told that "the drop" location changes from night to night.  So no bar would always be "the drop bar" but once one's bar becomes designated as such (presumably without the bar's owner necessarily even knowing about his/her establishment's designation beforehand) the bar owner would DEFINITELY MAKE SURE THAT THE "DROPPED" MONEY WAS "KEPT SAFE" for "pick-up" by the local mob's representative later on.  And, of course, it goes without saying that the money had better "all be there" when the mob's rep comes calling.

Well, early in the story, Bob's tending bar at his cousin Marv's place and the bar gets "hit" by two masked, somewhat amateurish, thugs on exactly the night that the bar was the neighborhood's "drop bar."  Marv even asks them: "Do you know what you're doing?  Do you know whose money you're stealing?"  They don't seem to care.  Not wanting to die for other people's money, Marv hands over to them the "evening's drop."

Okay ... but neither NYPD who Marv has to call to report the robbery (after-all the robbery was nominally witnessed by numerous bar patrons) nor the Chechen immigrant gangsters who actually run the neighborhood believe that the robbery was an accident.  When NYPD Detective Torres (played by John Ortiz) comes by to take statements, none of the "witnesses" except actually Bob "saw anything."  Yes, there they all saw a robbery take place, but NONE except Bob could offer ANYTHING descriptive of the perpetrators.  And actually, all that Bob notes to the detective was that ONE of the two assailants wore a watch that apparently didn't work.  He tells the detective that "his watch was stuck at 6:15."  That little detail would seem utterly trivial, but his older cousin Marv was irritated that Bob told the detective anything at all.  When Mob collector Chovka (played by Michael Aronov) comes by the next day, watch-or-no-watch, robbery-or-no-robbery, he tells Marv (and Bob standing by) simply that they owe the mob the $5,000 lost in the drop.

... a few days later the $5,000 shows up, along with the broken watch, and ... bit more than just said broken watch ... all nicely packed ... in a blood soaked bag.  A "crime" was "solved," "justice" was (almost to the letter) "restored" BUT ... what the heck happened?

These are the questions that fly-out-at those living in the neighborhood, but NO ONE in his / her right mind would want to publicly ask them (even in a whisper) ... TO ANYONE.

Now it turns out that there's SOMEONE in the neighborhood who's NOTORIOUSLY NOT "IN HIS RIGHT MIND" ... An Eric Deeds (played by Matthias Schoenaerts) KNOWN to have been institutionalized in a psycho-ward for a period of time "in his youth" AND WHISPERED ABOUT as the probable perpetrator of a NOTORIOUS "UNSOLVED" MURDER of another wayward youth some years back.  Did he do it?  Everybody thought he did.  BUT NOBODY WANTED TO TALK ABOUT IT BECAUSE IT SEEMED AGAIN POSSIBLY "MOB CONNECTED" AND THEY WERE SCARED OF HIM.

For his part, Deeds DIDN'T MIND HIS SCARY REPUTATION and spends much of the film terrorizing the people in the neighborhood that he wanted to terrorize, notably an "ex-girlfriend" named Nadia (played by Noomi Rapace) and later Bob.  Bob actually "meets" (starts talking to / befriending) Nadia when one evening coming home from work he hears a puppy whimpering inside a garbage can outside Nadia's house.  Apparently to terrorize both the puppy ... and Nadia..., Deeds had bashed the puppies head with something and then had left it, whimpering, in her trash can for her to find.  Why would he do that?  WELL, BECAUSE HE'S A PSYCHO who ENJOYS inflicting pain on the weak and terrorizing them.  Then when Deeds starts seeing Bob, Nadia, and the brought-to-better-health puppy (a baby pit-bull actually) together, he actually decides to EXTORT BOB telling him to give him $10,000 or he'd "capture the dog one day" and kill him (the dog, that is ... but ... ...).

WELL all comes to a head, when "Superbowl Sunday" (the "ugliness" of the previously missing $5000 at Marv's place having been "satisfactorily" resolved) the Chechens having designated Marv's place to be THE PERFECT PLACE FOR "THE DROP" ON THE BIGGEST (CASH) NIGHT OF THEIR YEAR (they'd presumably be REALLY CAREFUL WITH THE MONEY...), Deeds comes to the bar, with Nadia all dolled up "as his date", Marv's not around, asking Bob for the $10,000 (to "leave the dog alone...") and THEN ... Deeds stays around apparently with the intention of holding-up the place for the rest (the Mob's "drop").

At this point, if you were "Bob" what would you do? 

I found the film very well crafted and very well acted.  I _hope_ that its portrayal of "neighborhood life" was _exaggerated_ at least somewhat "for dramatic effect" as there are any number of establishments in my own neighborhood where I currently serve that could very well have been the bar portrayed in this film ;-). 

Indeed, the Church does have a role in the story.  Its role is not an overpowering one _but it is there_ and its role is not a bad one.  It is there for those who would but notice it / come to realize that they need it.

Very good film!


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Life After Beth [2014]

MPAA (R)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review


Life After Beth [2014] (written and directed by Jeff Baena) is IMHO a fun and amusingly subversive "small indie piece" about early 20-something Beth Slocum (played by Aubrey Plaza) who dies, hiking, in the first 30 seconds of the film (of a snake bite) and then about her boyfriend Zach (played by Dane DeHaan) and their two sets of parents, hers (played by John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon), his (played by Paul Reiser and Cheryl Hines) trying to get over (and trying to help Zach get over) her loss.

First, it needs to be realized that both Beth and Zach were "quite young" and truth be told already "not all that much into each other" when she ... died.  Indeed, one got the sense that they probably would have definitively broken-up shortly afterward, if she had not, well, again ... so suddenly died.

But die, she did.  And so Zach, as well as obviously her parents, was/were crushed.  So ... to "cope," Zach starts hanging-out, perhaps even more so than before, at Beth's house (with Beth's parents...) while they themselves are trying to deal with her sudden loss.  All this drives Zach's older and far more straightforward brother Kyle (played by Matthew Gray Gubler), who works as a neighborhood watch / security guard, nuts.  Watching Zach mope around about the loss of a girlfriend that he presumably had already (if not in death) lost anyway, Kyle just shakes his head and calls Zach what every older brother in America would call his younger brother acting in a similar way: "a p..." ;-).

Okay, Zach's kinda a loser ... but perhaps a sincere one. 

Well, one afternoon, he comes over to mope around at Beth's parents' house again, when he spots through the window ... Beth.  But wait, wasn't she DEAD?  He knocks on the door, then POUNDS on the door.  No answer.  Security guard Kyle comes around.  He asks Kyle, his brother, to do something.  Kyle, complicatedly explains that though he is a security guard, since HE IS A SECURITY GUARD he CAN'T JUST BREAK DOWN THE DOOR OF A HOUSE IN A NEIGHBORHOOD THAT HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE PROTECTING ;-) ... and tells Kyle that he's going to have to "be patient" and come back when Beth's parents come back (or feel ready) to open the door.

Angry, anxious, Zach finally gives up and goes home to come back later in the evening to Beth's parents' house to ask WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON.

Initially, Beth's parents deny everything ... but eventually they cave and say that "Beth's come back."  "BUT HOW, ISN'T SHE DEAD???"  "Yes, she was dead," Beth's mother answers, but one day "earlier in the week she came back."  "HOW?"  "Well, it's as if she was raised from the dead"  "Like JESUS??" (part of the schtick in this movie is BOTH FAMILIES ARE VERY JEWISH")  "Maybe."

But Beth's dad already suspects that Beth probably didn't come back "like Jesus."  HOW she came back, he didn't know, but (1) probably NOT _that_ way, and (2) "who cares HOW she came back (as a vampire, or a zombie, or whatever else ...) she's MY DAUGHTER and SHE CAME BACK" and so HE becomes a WILDLY "over-protective" father for the rest of the film ;-).

The rest of the film follows, and truth be told, I really enjoyed it.

Yes, it's kinda subversive ... Could one possibly think of "The Risen Jesus" as "a zombie"?   The film DID raise that question up for me ... Though OBVIOUSLY JESUS WAS NOT THAT as JESUS' BODY AS DESCRIBED IN THE BIBLE WAS NOT FALLING APART AS A RESULT OF HIS RESURRECTION BUT WAS ARGUABLY _BETTER_ / MORE CAPABLE (capable of passing through walls, etc) THAN BEFORE.

Still, I really enjoyed this film and yes, teens / young adults "break-ups" are hard ... but LIKE (MOURNING) THE DEAD ... one must eventually move on ;-)

Great / amusing young adult film ;-)

One last note, parents, the R is appropriate for both language and the 20-something nature of the film.  Yes, Zach tries to have ... at one point with his once dead now, kinda back to life, girlfriend... Anyway, the R is deserved, but the film remains IMHO surprisingly "fresh" and funny ;-)


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