The Gambler [2014]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RogerEbert.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (R. Moore) review
RogerEbert.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review  

Anyone who's played a little Blackjack in his/her life (HOPEFULLY for FAR, FAR LOWER STAKES THAN IN THIS FILM) will find the opening sequence in The Gambler [2014] (directed by Rupert Wyatt, screenplay by William Monahan based on the screenplay for the 1974 film by James Toback) PAINFUL:

Still looking somewhat rich, if disheveled, 30-something Jim Bennett (played by a surprising and impressive Mark Wahlberg) walks into a late night seaside Southern California illegal gambling establishment with a wad of big bills, asks for several tens of thousands of dollars of chips, gets them, proceeds to a blackjack table, places a $10,000 chip on the table and ... wins.  Then, HE KEEPS THE $10,000 there along with his $10,000 winnings and plays again ... and ... wins again.  Then keeping his bet and his winnings on the table again (now up to $40,000 (!)) ... and ... dealer looking toward his supervisor for advice (who nods to give the okay) ... plays again ... and ... wins again.  KEEPING NOW $80,000 on the table he asks to play again ... gets his cards and ... loses it all.  A few hands later, he's LOST EVERYTHING that he's come to the Establishment with.

OMG ... this guy is insane.  There's NO "SYSTEM" to his playing.  HE JUST "PLAYS" UNTIL HE LOSES _EVERYTHING_.

And to make the point, after insulting a smiling, immaculately dressed, shaking-his-head (at Bennett's recklessness) African-American loan-shark named Neville Baraka (played by Michael Kenneth Williams) and after being reminded by the illegal gambling establishment's owner "Lee" (played with magnificent understated "east Asian mafia fashion" by Alvin Ing) that Bennett owes the Establishment $240K and "someday" (soon ...) he's gonna have to pay that back, Bennett goes back to said still smiling, still-shaking-his-head loan-shark to loan him $50,000.  Now grinning-from-ear-to-ear over the insanity of it all, Baraka explains to him that he'd expect full payment plus 2 points ($20,000) in a week.  Bennett agrees, takes the $50,000 and proceeds to lose those $50,000 IN  EXACTLY THE SAME WAY THAT HE LOST THE $50K that he walked-in with.

Honestly WT(F) ??   Honestly, WHO PLAYS LIKE THIS?  An "ADDICT"?   No, someone with a death wish.  But why?

Well that's the rest of the film.

Now (of course) there are people (enablers??) who despite hating him / fearing him / fearing what his "problem/predicament" could DO TO THEM remain ARGUABLY FASCINATED by him (or just want to "help" him) -- his mother (played by Jessica Lange), a student of his (played by Brie Larson) and a THIRD "underworld figure" (played by John Goodman).

But can one really help someone who seems to be dead set on dying (and apparently insisting on doing so in "dramatic fashion")?  The police know a similar phenomenon quite well: "Suicide by cop..."

This all said, there's ANOTHER MORE "STRUCTURAL" DILEMMA: This is a "Hollywood movie" after all and "Hollywood" prefers that its films "end well."  So what does Hollywood / the filmmakers do with a story like this?  Do the filmmakers THEMSELVES pull their lead character out of his predicament ... or ... do they allow the film to run its more natural / inevitable course a la Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas [1995]? 

I'm not going to tell you ;-) ... but in any case this is a film that DEMANDS to be discussed after it's over.  And in that sense, Great job!


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The Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (orig. небесные жены луговых мари) [2012]

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

IMDb listing

KinoNews.ru listing*   KinoPoisk.ru listing*
Kino-teatr.ru listing*    Kritikanstvo.ru listing*

E-Kazan.ru coverage*  Filmz.ru interview with director*

MariUver.ru (S. Nikitin) review*

Argumenty-i-Fakty (A. Rogova) review* (5/10)
Argumenty-i-Fatky (M. Mamona) review* (8/10)
Kino-teatr.ru (E. Tkachev) review*
Pravda.ru (A. Evseev) review*
RIA-Novosti.ru (G. Olkhovoy) review*
RusKino.ru (S. Stepnova) review* (8/10)
Vedomosti.ru (O. Zintsov) review*

CineVue (P. Gamble) review (3/5)
EastEurFilmBulletin (M. Pfeifer) review
EyeForFilm.co.uk (A. Robertson) review (4/5)
Sound on Sight (R. Dickie) review

The Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (orig. небесные жены луговых мари) [2012] [IMDb] [en.wikip] [ru.wikip]*[KN.ru]*[KP.ru]*[KT.ru]* (directed by Aleksey Fedorchenko [IMDb] [en.wikip] [ru.wikip]*[KN.ru]*[KP.ru]*[KT.ru]* screenplay by Denis Osokin  [IMDb] [ru.wikip]*[KN.ru]*[KP.ru]*[KT.ru]* based his book [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by the same name) is EXACTLY the kind of "indie" / "insurgent" (in the best sense of the word) film that I largely created my blog to help make better known to the world.

The film did play some of the festival circuit in 2013 including the 2013 New York Film Week (whose films for the sake of "better understanding among nations" I've decided to look-up and review here) before returning back into obscurity.  I do actually hope that blogs like this one will keep at least the filmmaker and author as well as the Mari [en.wikip] people's folk-tales and practices (which make up the subject matter of much of their works) in the "collective consciousness" of the world because I do believe that their work is important and THE MARI CAN HELP ALL OF US, ESPECIALLY THOSE OF US OF (ANY) EUROPEAN DESCENT BETTER UNDERSTAND OURSELVES AND WHERE WE CAME FROM.

I write this because, the Meadow Maris (to distinguish them from the Mountain and Eastern Maris ;-) a Finno-Ugric people (hence related to the Finns/Estonians and Hungarians but lets not forget the Moldavs or Karelians either :-) still live-in and call-home the central Volga / Ural region (in a Russian administrative region called Mari-El [en.wikip] [ru.wikip] ) that was (probably) the Finno-Ugric peoples' original home.    

Further, the Maris are often called now "The Last Authentic Pagans of Europe" (the current film shows some of the characters praying / lighting candles at various traditional birch tree shrines) and hence knowing of / understanding their traditional beliefs / practices can help all people of European descent better know our (or their) own roots as well. 

This is not the first collaboration between filmmaker Aleksey Fedorchenko [IMDb] [en.wikip] [ru.wikip]*[KN.ru]*[KP.ru]*[KT.ru]* and Denis Osokin  [IMDb] [ru.wikip]*[KN.ru]*[KP.ru]*[KT.ru]* both apparently from the region.  Previously, they had collaborated on a film called Silent Souls (orig. Овсянки) [2010] [IMDb] [KP.ru]*[KT.ru]* which featured some of the funerary traditions of the Mari people.  The current film is about some of the Meadow Maris' beliefs and somewhat (to us) odd if generally simply quite "earthy" practices regarding fertility / sexuality.

However, it should be noted that the form that the film-maker / writer use here to inform the viewer of these traditional Mari beliefs and practices is NOT that of a strict documentary.  (Actually, an excellent if far-more-formal-in-structure documentary about beliefs and practices of the Mari is a 20 minute English language documentary segment produced by Russian Television entitled "Europe's Last Pagans" available on both its website and the Maris' own YouTube channel).   Instead, the filmmaker / writer express the Maris' traditional beliefs / practices in the course of the playing out of a drama (as in the case of Silent Souls (orig. Овсянки) [2010] [IMDb] [KP.ru]*[KT.ru]*) and/or the dramatization of the Maris' own folktales (as in the case of the current film).  The effect is certainly a livelier (and more authentic/lived-out-in-practice) presentation.
 

Now in fairness it should be noted here that "small" indigenous peoples all across the globe have during the course of history found themselves under various pressures to assimilate to the dominant or even occupying nation / culture.

The case of the Maris is no different.  From the time of the Czars, through the Soviet Era ("progressive" and "internationalist" in ideology but "if we're all 'internationalists' why hold on to one's 'particular culture...' especially if it is 'traditional' (meaning) 'backward'..."), to the era of the current Russian Federation (or "Federation"), the Maris have been under similar pressure to "Russify."

So the recent (apparently ethnic Russian) leader of the "Republic of Mari El" has apparently closed a number of Mari language newspapers in the region [en.wikip].  But then films like this are made and a Mari-run websites like MariUver and even Mari-run YouTube channels are created as well. 

Being an ethnic minority in a larger country is always a challenge, everywhere.  But the case of the Maris actually helps us to appreciate the value of respecting the _continued life_ and _vitality_ of indigenous peoples like the Mari.  THEY CAN HELP US UNDERSTAND WHO WE ARE AND WHERE WE CAME FROM.

GREAT FILM!  And I do hope that filmmaker Aleksey Fedorchenko [IMDb] and writer Denis Osokin  [IMDb] get to travel far-and-wide with their future works and that writer Denis Osokin's [GR] works get translated into English soon.


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

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Mr. Turner [2014]

MPAA (R)  ChicagoTribune (4 Stars)  RogerEbert.com (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B+)  Fr. Dennis (2 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Zoller Seitz) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review  

CineVue-Cannes (J. Bleasedale) review (4/5)
CineVeu (C.Williams) review (5/5)
EyeForFilm (R. Mowe) review (4/5)
Independent.co.uk review (5/5)
SlantMagazine (C. Cabin) review (3.5/4)

To be truthful, I was not overly impressed by Mr. Turner [2014] (written and directed by Michael Leigh) a British bio-pic about 19th century artist J.M.W. Turner (played in the film by Timothy Spall).  To be sure, THE CINEMATOGRAPHY was often stunning producing still or lingering panoramic shots that replicate the dewy shimmering tones, often facing into an afternoon sun, of the landscape paintings for which the artist was famous.  Anyone with some experience with a camera would appreciate the difficulty of these kind of shots ... to get the tones just right, remarkable!

But if Mr Turner "had an eye" for the subtleties of light, in other aspects, he was portrayed in the film as a veritable Neanderthal.  As portrayed, he grunted most of his speech, and when he made the occasional sexual advance on some poor woman that he had become fond of (he apparently considered himself "entitled" to that sort of thing...), the portrayal truly left me speechless.  By midway through the movie, I was wondering: "Couldn't they have just put a club in his hands?"  As presented, his "M.O." was just that appalling ;-)

So what to make of a film like this?  The "Masterpiece Theater" / Downton Abbey [2010-] crowd would probably eat this film up.  However, with the exception of some of the often stunning outdoor cinematography, I found myself "rolling my eyes" at Turner's "cave man" demeanor and glancing at my watch (a lot ...) looking forward to the film's eventual end. 

So cinematography aside, this film is certainly not for everyone.



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The Homesman [2014]

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

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (S. O'Malley) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review  

The Homesman [2014] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Tommy Lee Jones along with Kieran Fitzgerald and Wesley A. Oliver based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout [IMDb]) is something of a subversive / "revisionist" or perhaps "corrective" Western.  (Since there have been _so many_ Westerns made over the years, film-makers (and actors / actresses) do, with due fairness to their crafts, look for fresh approaches to the genre).

So the approach taken in this story was to take a look at the "Old West" from the perspective of the women that went out West -- with their parents, with their husbands, and even with fiances the they barely knew.  Approached from this angle, "the Frontier" wasn't exactly an awesome place to go.

Indeed, the story presented in this film reminds me of the stories recounted to me by our church secretary in a parish that we used to have in Milwaukie, OR (just outside of Portland) where I had served my diaconate.  Having a couple of young daughters, she had gotten involved in the various commemorations of a fairly big anniversary of the Oregon Trail.  One of the insights that she shared from the experience was that _pregnancy_ was one of the main realities for the wives who traversed the Trail with their husbands and families back in the 1840s: Either they were already pregnant when they started the journey or became pregnant during it.  In any case, however, the challenge for people today trying to appreciate the hardships of making the then almost 6 month journey was to imagine doing it, pregnant, sitting in (or when things got really bad, laying in) a wagon that was going albeit slowly but nevertheless up-and-down-and-all-around as it was traversing a well-worn and not particularly well-maintained dirt path that was the Oregon Trail -- from Independence, Missouri all the way to Willamette Valley in Oregon.

The current film set in the rather endless short-grass prairie of Nebraska is largely about three young wives who went crazy out there in the middle of the endless "nowhere" (seriously some of the very evocative and (to make the point) necessarily _depressing_ panoramic shots in the film make the Nebraska of the mid-1800s look like the "sand planet" where "Luke" would have "grown-up" in the first Star Wars [1977] movie).  A fourth woman, Mary Bee Cuddy (played with Oscar Nomination worthiness by Hillary Swank) is tasked by her local Pastor (played by John Lithgow) to take the women back to Iowa where another Pastor friend and his wife would take care of them and perhaps send them back to their original families.  Again, this is not exactly the "American frontier story" that we're generally acquainted with...

Since Mary Bee Cuddy, tough, competent as the rest, perhaps _more competent_ than most of the local men (several of whose wives she was being tasked to "take home to their original families") was nevertheless "a woman" ... she's encouraged to find a man, really _any man_ to serve as a "homesman" (the title of the story) to "help her" with this sad and difficult task.  The ONLY man that she finds who could help her was a small-time drunk / scoundrel, arguably a "sorry excuse for a man" (played in the film, certainly with some delight by the director Tommy Lee Jones himself).

So then, there's the story's set up:  The honest and tough, perhaps tragically "too tough" for her own good Mary Bee Cuddy, sets off with three crazy women in tow and a not altogether sane male drifter who's supposed to "help her" in her task to bring the said "crazy women" back home somewhere "back East" Iowa-way.  Much, often quite sad / sometimes quite poignant ensues ...


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Metro (orig. Метро) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  KN.ru (7.9/10)  KP.ru (85/100)  KT.ru (7.9)  MediaNews.ru (10/10)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing

KinoNews.ru listing*   KinoPoisk.ru listing*
Kino-teatr.ru listing*    Kritikanstvo.ru listing*
Megacritic.ru listing*

Variety.com (N. Holdsworth) article
VarietyRussia.com (N. Karcev) review*

Afisha.ru (M. Kuvshinova) review*
Filmz.ru (A. Yushchenko) review*
KinoNews.ru (R. Volohov) review*
Kino-Teatr.ru (A. Filippov) review*
Media-News.ru (Nadin) review*
RusKino.ru (S. Stepnova) review*
Samizdat-Zhurnal.lib.ru (A.O. Valentinovna) review*
UralWeb.ru (O. Petrov) review*


Metro (orig. Метро) [2013] [IMDb] [KN.ru]* [KP.ru]*[KT.ru]*(directed and screenplay cowritten by Anton Megerdichev [IMDb] [KN.ru]* [KP.ru]*[KT.ru]* along with Denis Kuryshev [IMDb] [KN.ru]*[KP.ru]*[KT.ru]* and Viktoriya Evseeva [IMDb] [KP.ru]*[KT.ru]*) is a first of its kind "Russian blockbuster / disaster movie" that became something of a point of national pride last year ("Yes we _can_ make a film like this!"  It's honestly worth reading through some of the Russian language reviews listed above.  And this is actually quite easy using the Google Chrome browser in which clicking a single icon that appears in the upper right hand corner of the browser screen produces a relatively good "machine translation" of the text).

The film played at 2013 New York Russian Film Week whose films I've decided to try to find and review here on my blog now.

The story envisions the breakdown of one of Moscow's 1930s-era subway tunnels under the Moscow River one fine morning.  The tunnel becomes increasingly flooded with water as the cracks become larger.  With the flow increasingly becoming a torrent, the entire subway system comes to be threatened at one point and even the collapse of a good portion of the city above becomes possible.  The scenario was actually inspired by subway construction / operational mishaps (in 1974 and 1996) in Russian second city St. Petersburg / Leningrad).

Now a good part of what makes a "genre movie" (in this case a disaster movie) interesting is the film's "subtext."  And this film is certainly rich in subtext:

The leak appears on a line built during the 1930s (hence during Stalin era) NEAR a formerly secret "station" and even deviation of the subway line.  Tellingly, the presence of the formerly "secret station" ends up saving some who otherwise would have certainly become victims of the disaster portrayed -- they find a place to hide / flee -- BUT they are saved by the utterly historical accident of the presence of this "once secret bunker."  The case being made FOR Stalin these days in Russia is that STALIN saved Russia from Hitler, but the counterpoint being made, even in Russia, is that he did so largely or even utterly by accident: No matter how abused Russia had been under Stalin it had no other choice but to basically "follow him."  But can someone really be happy that a notoriously violent and abusive husband did actually come to save his wife from being raped by a violent and sadistic stranger? (or perhaps even simply avenged his abused wife's rape by eventually stalking down and killing the sadistic stranger)?  And yet, the violent / abusive husband eventually get / kill the guy.  And the wife, (Mother) Russia, got to live... In the film, some of the characters get to survive the depicted subway disaster simply as a result of a Stalin-era "accident."

However, contemporary debate about the Stalin Era is not by no means the only subtext in the film: The subway collapse in the movie is blamed on "uncontrolled construction" above-ground during the more recent POST-COMMUNIST ERA which is to have altered ground water flows and soil characteristics in unforeseen / unstudied and hence unknown ways.  And THIS IS a current concern / fear in Russia today -- that a great deal of what goes on in Russia today is uncontrolled / unregulated (basically who has money to bribe can do just about anything) and hence THE CONSEQUENCES of such uncontrolled / unregulated actions are largely UNKNOWABLE.   And honestly not knowing that even basic things are "the way they should be" can be pretty frightening. 

But beyond these "big issue" subtexts present in the film a more personal drama plays out in a complex arguably double love triangle between several of the film's main characters:

A modern traveling "career woman" Irina (played by Svetlana Khodchenkova [IMDb] [KN.ru]*[KT.ru]*) is married to a "good" if perhaps somewhat "boring" ER-doctor named Garin (played by Sergei Puskepalis [IMDb] [KN.ru]*[KT.ru]*) who's still _choosing_ to work at a Moscow PUBLIC HOSPITAL.  But she ALSO has a hot "bysnessman" lover named Konstantinof (played by Anatoliy Belyy [IMDb] [KN.ru]*[KT.ru]*).

While "modern feminist (caricature)" Irina is not portrayed well at all, together with Garin she has a cute-as-a-button daughter named Ksyusha (played by Anfisa Vistingauzen [IMDb] [KN.ru]*[KT.ru]*) over whose affections Garin (Irina's husband) and Konstantinof (Irina's lover) really battle.

The presence of the cute-as-a-button daughter and then, yes, a cute-as-a-button lap-dog that little Ksyusha becomes concerned about and repeatedly saves throughout the film are actually very cute adaptations-of and concessions-to traditional Soviet/Russian cinematic "kitsch" ;-).  What's a good Soviet era / Russian "family friendly film" WITHOUT a "cute-as-a-button kid" and then even a dog? ;-) BUT AGAIN, THESE STOCK CHARACTERS ARE  HONESTLY _NICE_.

So as the disaster film plays-out, the question throughout is "who is Irina (well we're kinda stuck with her...) but 'more importantly' who is cute-as-a-button Ksyusha going to end up with?  And, realistically, the answer to that question actually still involves who Irina the 'problematic / fallen mom' ends-up choosing as well:  Is Irina simply going to stay with her hot "getting to be richer than God" lover living in a glass-and-steel modern Moscow high-rise?  Or is she going to choose to come back to her more boring "doctor who still wants to do good" husband living in her / her husband's ... "different kind of high rise" but one that they (and other more regular Moscovites) can afford ...?

So yes, "much plays out" and yes, it somehow involves "an accident on the Moscow Metro" one day ;-) ;-)

Honestly, this is a very interesting and often quite entertaining "disaster film."  Now could Irina's character have been portrayed a little more kindly?  Still ... what a film!

ADDENDUM:

My parents' Communist-Era Czech roots require me to note a scene in the film that almost certainly had to be made ironically (or certainly would have made many "eyes roll"):
 
Yes, the husband Garin is portrayed as a "good guy." But the film-makers do "lay it on thick."  Early in the film, we see a _very grateful_ mother of a patient who he had just saved "SPONTANEOUSLY / OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF HER HEART" _giving him_ a BIG BOTTLE OF SOME KIND OF (PRESUMABLY EXPENSIVE) ALCOHOL for "saving her son."  He tells the grateful mother that he does not drink, but "so as not to hurt her feelings" he ... ACCEPTS THE "GIFT" ANYWAY ... OH PLEASE ... ANYONE of a COMMUNIST ERA EXTRACTION KNOWS A BRIBE WHEN HE/SHE SEES ONE ... IN THE PROPER ORDER, SHE'D COME WITH THE BIG BOTTLE OF EXPENSIVE ALCOHOL FIRST ... AND THEN (PERHAPS) HER SON WOULD HAVE BEEN SAVED...)


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

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The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death [2015]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoSunTimes (C. Puig) review
RE.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review

The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death [2015] (directed by Tom Harper, screenplay by Jon Croker, story by Jon Croker and Susan Hill) is IMHO a basically safe and appropriately rated PG-13 "scary movie" that "the family" could go see together.

Set during the "Blitz" of early 1941, when London and most of England's cities were being bombed by the Nazis and therefore the cities' children were being evacuated, two teachers, one older a Mrs Jean Hogg (played by Helen McCrory) the wife of a British Officer, the other young, a Miss Eve Perkins (played by Phoebe Fox), are tasked with leading a group of children who have nowhere else to a refuge / school set-up for them by the British government.

So where did the government decide to send this poor group of child evacuees and their adult caretakers?  TO THE SAME CREEPY SEASIDE HOUSE of the first Woman in Black [2012] movie.  Yikes!

Upon arrival, almost everybody who can asks the same question: "Isn't there ANY OTHER PLACE that you could send us?"  And it's not just that the house is incredibly creepy looking with its overgrown vines and gardens.  But the house is surrounded by a tidal bog in which a child had already famously (or infamously) drowned (the child's death forming the back-story of why the house was thought by local townspeople to be haunted in the first place).  So the location was not exactly safe.  BUT all those in authority keep repeating: "There _is_ no place to move all of you to." (The group comprised the two teachers as well as a dozen or so children).  So they're stuck.

Well that could not be good ... and it wasn't.  Because the house _was_ haunted by "the woman in black" who we got to know from the first movie.

Now why was she haunting the place?   Did I mention that there was a child who drowned in the bogg surrounding the place?  She was the child's mother.  The child was born already under somewhat "scandalous circumstances."  The mother was already deemed "of questionable reason" even before the child drowned ... and then he did.  So, it could be said that the mother did not take her child's death "well."

And from that point forward (as we learned in the first installment), the house was not exactly the best place for young children OR for the people responsible for taking care of them.

Now it turns out that that one of the children in the group, Edward (played by Oakley Pendercast) had recently lost his parents in an air-raid, a piece of information that presumably a ghost (living largely on "the other side") could know and since ghost in question, "The Woman in Black," was not necessarily an Evil ghost but one "with a chip on her shoulder" (feeling that she wasn't respected appropriately in this life) ONE COULD EXPECT that the ghost would take a _perhaps sincere_ but _not exactly helpful_ (or appropriate) PROTECTIVE INTEREST in poor Edward.

So when Edward, still somewhat "shell shocked" by the sudden / tragic deaths of his parents, starts to get picked-on (not terribly picked-on but picked-on nonetheless) by other not altogether comprehending kids (THEY'RE KIDS AFTER ALL ...) well THIS UNSTABLE "GHOST WITH UNRESOLVED ISSUES" decides to "get involved" ...

And so, much necessarily ensues ...

Now it turns out that there are _several other characters_ in this story (living) who ALSO have "unresolved issues."  These include Edward, again simply devastated over the loss of his parents.  But they also include the younger teacher Eve, who we learn had a child taken away from her when she was young (she was found pregnant as a teenager and so after she had given birth the child had been promptly taken away from her for adoption).  There was also a British Airman named Harry Burnstow (played by Jeremy Irvine) who Eve and the group met on the train from London to this creepy seaside house, who was also heading in that same direction to re-unite with his unit after being briefly hospitalized after his plane had been shot down (It turns out that his three other crew mates all died in the ensuing crash following the plane's being shot down.  He was the only survivor AND HE FELT VERY GUILTY ABOUT THAT ...).

So there's a lot going on in this story with number of people with either "deep dark secrets" and/or friends / loved ones "on the other side." AND then there's this ghost, who _isn't_ necessarily EVIL but is certainly TORMENTED and perhaps CRAZY _brought_ into the midst of it all ;-).

So this is story, IMHO, _not_ about "a Demon" though CERTAINLY NOT about "Casper the Friendly Ghost."  Instead, it's about a ghost who's both powerful and "troubled."  The person was troubled in life and now remains troubled, indeed, _stuck_ in death.

Sigh, poor ghost ... but again ... much then has to play out ... and it does ... ;-)


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Guardians of the Galaxy [2014]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (G. Kenny) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Guardians of the Galaxy [2014] (directed and cowritten by James Gunn along with Nicole Perlman, inspired by the Marvel Comics comic book series [MarvU] [wikip 1969 2008] of the same name).  Of the Marvel comic book characters / series put on the big-screen to date, this is probably the most "out there" err "ambitious"  Indeed, initially, I chose to "put this one aside", contributing what I would have spent on the film to our Parish's "To Teach Who Christ Is" campaign ;-).  However, the film has proven to be wildly successful, indeed 2014's top grossing Hollywood film, making $332 million according to boxofficemojo.com.  So as the year has come to an end, it's hard for a reviewer like me to continue to "set aside" this film.

Indeed, part of the reason why I began writing reviews has been to raise-up and analyze films that _other critics_ have dissed or dismissed but have proven to be wildly popular nonetheless.  So I've happily written about / analyzed (favorably for the most part) films like the toy-based Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon [2011], and the video-game based Underworld: Awakening [2012] and Resident Evil: Retribution [2012] ;-) because I do believe that WILDLY popular films such as these have to speak to viewers on some deeper level than one would normally / superficially expect.

So how could the current film, Guardians of the Galaxy [2014], "speak to viewers" on a "deeper level" than one would initially expect?  The film is about Peter Quill (played briefly as a child by  Wyatt Oleff and later as an adult by Chris Pratt) who, in the 1970s, almost immediately after the death of his mother to cancer is "abducted by space aliens" (with only the clothes on his back and amusingly a 70s era "walkman") and transported into a world, universe WILDLY DIFFERENT than he (or we) was/were previously accustomed.

Okay the death of a parent or, more mundanely, the break-up of one's family can be WILDLY DISORIENTING to a child.  Note that I was at the border of such tragedy in my own family as my mother came down with and not-too-much-later died also of cancer as I was graduating from college.  So while far being older than Peter in the film when he lost his mother, I was still quite young and I can _personally attest_ to the experience being WILDLY DISORIENTING. 

However, putting the wildly disorienting experience of the death of a parent or the breakup of one's family aside -- consider ALSO that another recent film, here the Oscar caliber Wild [2014] is also about young woman played who lost her mother when she was young --  ALL OF US and especially the young are finding ourselves in a far more diverse / disorienting time than in times of recent past.  A number of years ago, a CNN report put it succinctly this way: In the United States, today's Seniors and their grandchildren live in two very different countries.  This is because some 90% of Seniors in the U.S. today remain white, while approaching 1/2 the nation's children especially in the younger grades are no longer white.  Now both African Americans and Hispanics tend to be Christian (Hispanics in large majority Catholic).  However, Asians and Middle Easterners are often, even generally, not.  The result is that American children (and even their parents) are living in a country / world far more dynamic / diverse than their grandparents and great-grandparents.  And that can be BOTH "disorienting" and experienced as COOL.

I do believe that this second possible response to the diversity (and its possibilities) that we're experiencing as COOL is reflected in the WILDLY POPULAR SCI-FI EXPRESSIONS a Cosmos absolutely brimming with almost infinite diversity / possibility.  One thinks of the phenomenal popularity of: (1) the 1960s original Star Trek television series, (2) the 1970s-80s original Star Wars trilogy (the early space alien filled "bar scene" etched into the minds of an entire generation of viewers), (3) the 1970s-80s era Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, which in only somewhat more staid / conventional form (radio then prose) expressed the wild diversity already present in the American/Marvel comic books like, in fact, the original Guardians of the Galaxy, and (4) the 1990s-2000s Men in Black films.  All of these Pop Cultural expressions have simply GLORIED in the infinite possibility of the Cosmos before us only a tiny portion of which we ever experience, let alone, understand.

Add to this the pop-cultural popularity of Erich von Däniken's "Chariots of the Gods?" inspired "Ancient Alien" [IMDb] phenomenon (which fascinatingly seeks, among other things, to bring "unity to religion(s)" by (re)labeling ALL GODS of ALL RELIGIONS to be previously "mis-understood" / "mis-interpreted" SPACE ALIENS), IT SHOULDN'T BE SURPRISING _AT ALL_ that a film like the current one, about a "terran" who was "abducted by space aliens" at "an early age," was (probably) initially "disoriented" by the experience BUT HAS SINCE "ADAPTED" AND IS NOW WILDLY ENJOYING THE POSSIBILITIES ... would prove to be PHENOMENALLY SUCCESSFUL:

ALL OF US TODAY to one extent or another are basically the film's "terran" hero "Peter Quill" ...

The plot doesn't matter.  The story just glories in infinite possibility.  And it's fun.  Peter's companions include an talking / intelligent raccoon named Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), a genetically engineered / sentient and locomotive TREE named Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), a similarly genetically-altered woman (supposedly to :make her into a weapon") named Gamora (played by Zoe Saldana) and a blue-collarish generally red-faced "space tough" named Drax (played by Dave Bautista).  Together this motley, indeed quite ad hoc crew ... set out to (somehow) "protect the Galaxy" from celestial megalomaniacs / evil doers like Ronan (played by Lee Pace) whose Power (and monstrously Evil designs) we could only imagine. 

In a world that seems to be constantly shape-shifting and changing Peter Quill who's "found peace" and even _delight_ in all this change / diversity becomes a very interesting character indeed ;-).


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