Black Venus (orig. Vénus noire) [2010]

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

IMDb listing
Allocine.fr listing*

La Croix (A. Schwartz) review*
Le Monde (T. Sotinel) review*
Le Figaro (M.N. Tranchant) review*
L'Humanité (D. Widemann) review*

aVoir-aLire.fr (R. Le Vern) review*
Slant Magazine (A. Cutler) review
Village Voice (M. Anderson) review

Black Venus (orig. Vénus noire) [2010] [IMDb] [AC.fr]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Abdellatif Kechiche [IMDb] [AC.fr]* along with Ghalia Lacroix [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) is a film that (repeatedly) was very hard to watch.  A historical drama that played recently at the 2015 Chicago French Film Festival (July 31 - Aug 6, 2015) held here at the Music Box Theater, it tells the shockingly sad but tragically _true_ story of Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman.

Born around 1790, Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman (played in the film by Yahima Torres [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) was a native South African of the Khoi people.  A servant (but she insisted never a slave, though perhaps a distinction without much difference except perhaps _to her_ ...) to white Afrikaner settlers, she was taken around 1810 by one of them, Hendrick Ceazar (played by André Jacobs [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) to Europe - to LONDON then to PARIS - to perform as AS A FREAK-SHOW CIRCUS ACT.

To some extent one has to understand that most Europeans, especially common ones, had NO IDEA WHO Africans were or WHAT they looked like.  So seeing a fairly large dark-skinned woman with a large dexterior was wildly outside their day-to-day experience.  The problem, of course, was that Hendrick's Ceazar's show PLAYED (indeed PREDATED) ON Saartijie's quite normal South African physique (and European ignorance) as well as on Europeans' sense of manifest superiority -- it could have well been that English and later French "customers" had friends / relatives similarly proportioned BUT Saartijie (or the "Hottentot Venus" as she was called) was dark complected and hence seemed both _exotic_ and _backward_.

Indeed, throughout the story there were various people, both English and French, who _tried_ at least _in part_ to defend her humanity including a group of English abolitionists who brought a court case up on her behalf. 

But MOST could not but see her as _above all_ an exotic _specimen_:  A group from the French Academy of Natural Sciences WANTED TO STUDY HER and were willing to pay Ceazar (and Saartjie) a handsome fee to do so.  And in part they were _clinical_ about their study of her (taking sketches, making measurements of her, etc, etc).  But when she refused to let them _study_ (or "study") her privates, their "deal" fell through.

It was at this point that Ceazar's interest in Saartjie also collapsed, and her life proceeded then in a downward spiral where she ended up inevitably working as a prostitute.

The final indignity came after her death in 1815: The men of the French Academy of Natural Science came back and "bought" her body from her former circus associate Réaux (played by Olivier Gourmet [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) who along with his common-law wife/partner (played by Elina Löwensohn [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) served as her "managers" (and basically pimps/partners in prostitution) in her later years.   After her death then, the men then of the French Academy of Natural Science got their chance to "examine" her genitals which they _cut out_ of her and _displayed_ along with cast model of her body and her skeleton at the Museum of Man in Paris until 1974.

The poignant postscript to her life is shown as the film's final credits run:  After the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, in 1994 President Nelson Mendela FORMALLY PETITIONED the French Government to return Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman's remains to be buried in her homeland.  Nearly 10 years of wrangling followed.  Finally, on August 9, 2002 she was buried near the town of Hankey in the Gamtoos Valley where she was born.

Hers was an absolutely awful story, and yet the film did show that she _always_ kept a dignity about her.  FOR ONE, SHE CAME TO SPEAK FOUR LANGUAGES: her native Khoi, Afrikans, English and finally French.  She actually defended herself in the English trial about her status declaring that she was NOT a slave and that she freely acted (how free was she?) her part in her / Ceazar's show, for which she said she was _paid_ (how much?).    She also REFUSED to show her genitals for the "good men" of the French Academy of Natural Sciences, causing her to lose her "partnership" with Ceazar as a result.  Even so, she refused to bend.  She did eventually fall into prostitution, but even there she maintained _some_ control over her destiny.  Her story was then, both awful, and also _not completely awful_.  And certainly, her trials (if tragically only in retrospect) _thoroughly shamed_ her contemporaries.

One powerful film, very difficult to watch but worth its pain / shame to all of us.



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

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Breathe (orig. Respire) [2014]

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

IMDb listing
Allocine.fr listing*

Elle.fr (A. Ditakine) review*
Femme Actuelle (C. Bernheim) review*
LaCroix.fr (M. Soyeux) review*
LeMonde.fr (F. Nouchi) review*
Libération (G. Renault) review*

APUM.com (C. Mosequi) review*
aVoir-aLire.fr (G. Crespo) review*
Camera Obscura (T. Grégoire) review*
Sound On Sight (G. Cwik) review


Breathe (orig. Respire) [2014] [IMDb] [AC.fr]* (directed and screenplay cowritten by Mélanie Laurent [IMDb] [AC.fr]*, along with Julien Lambroschini [IMDb] [AC.fr]* based on the French lang. orig. (available in Eng. trans.) YA novel [GR-Eng] [GR-Fr]*[WCat-Eng] [WCat-Fr]*[Amzn-Eng] [Amzn-Fr-US]*[Amzn-Fr]* by Anne-Sophie Brasme [GR] [fr.wikip]* [Amzn-Eng] [Amzn.fr]*[IMDb] [AC.fr]*).  The film played recently at the 2015 Chicago French Film Festival (July 31 - Aug 6, 2015) held at the Music Box Theater here in Chicago.

While the story does turn into a late-teenage psychological thriller (quite interesting/compelling in its own right, worthy perhaps of Stephen King [wikip] [GR] [IMDb] without ever resorting to King's supernatural flourishes) the _biggest take-away_ for American viewers, particularly of late-teen / early 20-something age, could simply be the glimpse that it offers into the lives of quite average _French_ teenagers (as opposed to American ones).  And things are both "the same" and "different" for therm.

The story centers on 17 going-on 18 year-old Charlie (Charléne) (played by Joséphine Japy [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) a thoroughly average French teenager from some random suburban-like subdivision at the edge of some random provincial town presumably somewhere in the south (warmer part) of France.
Of a generally unassuming disposition, she does reasonably well in school (it's basically her "senior year").  While never "the life of the party," she begins the story with no enemies and one definite BFF, Victoire (played by Roxane Duran [IMDb] [AC.fr]*), who lives "down the street" and who know each other basically forever.  At home, well, there are some problems.  Her parents (played by Isabelle Carré [IMDb] [AC.fr]* and Radivoje Bukvic [IMDb] [AC.fr]* respectively) fight / break-up, then make-up, then fight again ... and this has gone on for the whole of Charlie's life without much resolution.  Apparently, they were quite young when they had Charlie and never married (or were married though somewhat "unconvincingly" / "under the gun", then got divorced, then tried to get back together again, then broke-up again, then ... the Reader should get the picture ...).  So there's _nothing_ particularly "special" about Charlie.  Basically, she's a thoroughly average French teenager, _not_ "from the boonies" but basically "from the Provinces."

Into her quite unassuming / unspectacular world then enters Sarah (played by Lou de Laâge [IMDb] [AC.fr]*) also in her last year in high school.  She introduces herself to Charlie and her school friends as having recently returned to France from Africa, her parents having (also) split up, and her mother still working for some NGO.  Since her ma' was still out there in Nigeria or someplace, Sarah tells them that she's living with her aunt.  Wow.  Hers had to be the most exciting/dramatic story to be heard in this quite "boring" town (or suburban section of town) in a long, long time, and she exudes a "worldly-ish" confidence that, again, is not exactly common in "small town" / "provincial" France.

Somewhat randomly, Sarah latches on to Charlie.  Moving people around to accommodate the new student, a random teacher in a random class places Sarah next to Charlie and from there they kind of hit it off.  Well, Sarah's talkative, full of stories of various adventures of various kinds (again, they're late-teenagers about to "turn legal" / "become adults" in all sorts of ways), and Charlie's, well, nice.

Perhaps the first sign of trouble was that Sarah, again a transplant with no knowledge of the friendships and social hierarchies in the school, makes short shrift of Charlie's life-long BFF Victoire.  She, of course, didn't know Victoire at all, and she needed a friend like Charlie.  So Sarah just insinuated herself quite forcefully between Victoire and Charlie.  And since Victoire (or Charlie for that matter) had _no_ experience with anybody like Sarah, soon ... yes "eye-rolling" but dazed (as in "what did just happen?" dazed...) Sarah made herself Charlie's best friend, and Victoire was ... out.

While Charlie didn't necessarily understand "what just happened with Victoire" -- no Victoire wasn't killed or anything, just "Sorry Victoire we don't time.  Oh, I  (Sarah) forgot to call you.  Dear God, can't you (Victoire) take a hint, Charlie doesn't like you anymore" socially removed from the picture -- Charlie's attention is definitely raised when, on "late autumn break" (around "All Saint's Day" that is Nov 1st, or around Halloween in the United States) Sarah basically steals a guy that Charlie had been previously kinda interested in.  What's going on?  What kind of a "friend" is this Sarah?

Well, not completely a doormat, Charlie does some investigating of her own, and discovers that Sarah does have a secret that could explain some of her odd / socially aggressive behavior.  But when Charlie tries to talk to / confront Sarah with her discovery and even trying to say "it's okay (but start now to behave with respect like the rest of us ...)," Sarah instead responds with basically "total (social) war."   And truth be told, while the two had been sort-of friends, Charlie had perhaps shared more with Sarah than she probably should have.
 
So ... the second half of the film goes quite dark.  The genius of the story is that it never steps a la Stephen King's Carrie into the realm of out-right unbelievable / crazy.   Instead, the story that plays out feels all too possible.

An excellent Y/A film!


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

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Me and Earl and the Dying Girl [2014]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (S. O'Malley) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review


Me and Earl and the Dying Girl [2014] (directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, screenplay by Jesse Andrews [IMDb] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] based on his novel (2012) by the same name [GR] [WCat] [Amzn]) is a fun teen oriented film/story about senior year in high school that (look at the title) pretty much has to end up sad.  As such, though interestingly a number of the younger film critics links to whose reviews I list above _hated_ the film (for it's, eye roll, cliches) my guess is that a lot of less "film-schooled" teens / young adults will / have enjoy(ed) this film.

The film is about a tall, somewhat lumbering, amiable (to hide his awkwardness) geek named Greg, the "me" in the story (played by Thomas Mann) who's successfully figured out the lingo/customs (fist bumps, high fives, peace signs ...) of all his school's cliques just so that he could avoid them all ;-).  To do so (avoid them), he eats lunch away from the cafeteria in some out of the way book stack laden office with his quite cool, goatie mustached / heavily tattooed history teacher Mr. McCarthy (played wonderfully by Jon Bernthal) and several other misfit refugees.  Together they honestly make up a clique of their own (and quite elitist at that) but don't have the awareness (here) to see themselves as that.  High school ;-).

But to be a clique would probably require that these refugees congregating in this out-of-the way hide-out during lunch watching "Criterion Collection Great Movies" under the direction of above mentioned cool and goatied / tattooed history teacher admit that they were friends, something that apparently seemed too "simplistic" / "petty bourgeoisie" for them them to do.  Indeed, throughout the film Greg _insists_ on calling fellow Mr. McCarthy refugee, Earl (played by RJ Cyler) to _everyone_ outside of Greg's internally quite-active but thoroughly detached-to-feel-safe mind HIS BEST FRIEND SINCE CHILDOOD, his "coworker" and Earl doesn't mind (!) ... Apparently "friendship" is just a "label" describing a relational state that "coworker" largely expresses without commitment-carrying "baggage."

But why "coworker"?  What are they "coworking in"?  Well over the course of the last 2-3 years (since they've been congregating with Mr McCarthy's other misfits, watching said "Criterion Collection" movies) they've made some 40 or so "spoofs" of said movies.  And they are amusing:  "Tulip Box Now" (instead of Apocalypse Now [1979]) -- featuring the two, Earl dressed in combat fatigues, dropping oragami paper tulips of various colors to a box, with Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries [wikip] playing in the background, begging one or the other say the famous line from the original: "I love the smell of [...] in the morning."  Another features Earl, now dressed in a cowboy hat, strolling down some busy Pittsburgh boulevard in "2:48 PM Cowboy" (instead of Midnight Cowboy [1979]) with Harry Nillson's Everybody's Talkin' [wikip] from the original's soundtrack playing in the background. A third involves white sock puppets playing out their rendition of Clockwork Orange [1971], their spoof named ... guess ;-).   The spoofs are brilliant / funny.  But typical of the two -- and here in fairness, typical of high school students in general -- they DON'T show these spoofs to anybody but themselves.

Enter then "the dying girl" Rachel (played IMHO quite well / realistically by Olivia Cooke).  The daughter of Greg's mother's best friend (the two mothers, Greg's and Rachel's played by Connie Britton and Molly Shannon respectively) Rachel attended the same school as Greg, but prior to her illness the two didn't interact much, Rachel belonging to her own small clique of friends and Greg, belonging to none.  Well Greg's mom guilts Greg to visit Rachel.  Shiela O'Malley of RogerEbert.com (perhaps significantly _the only woman_ among the reviewers that I list above above) found Rachel's acceptance of Greg into her life at this point unrealistic.  Perhaps, but I do think that given the friendship of the two mothers that Rachel could have well reacted in the manner that portrayed in the film -- with appropriate initial skepticism but not outright rejection (and Greg too wasn't particularly thrilled by the prospect of interacting with someone outside his previously very small "safe zone"). 

What Rachel does is do (for Greg) is _force_ Greg to "open up" and not in some cliched sense but really _open-up_ to a world that previously he had cocooned himself from.  In the course of their emerging friendship, she comes across his / Earl's videos and ... likes them.  Then Rachel's BFF Madison (played wonderfully with both _kindness_ and, with respect to Greg/Earl, unattainable aloofness - "in your dreams" ;-) - by Catherine C. Hughes), who hasn't seen Greg/Earl's films but has heard of them from Rachel, guilts the two into making a movie for Rachel.  Again, she hasn't seen their films and doesn't really have an idea of how much work / soul would go into them, BUT she thinks it'd be a _really nice thing_ for the two of them to make a film for Rachel.  How honestly wonderful!

This then sets up the rest of the movie, as, needless to say, making a film like that was not going to be easy ...

The question of why (some) people _die young_ is of course one that someone in my line of work (as a Catholic priest) inevitably (and with some regularity) has to confront.  The existence of suffering in this world is of course a mystery.  But this film does offer perhaps some matter for reflection on the matter (and here readers note that Rachel and her mother were Jewish):

It does seem that ONE EFFECT of Rachel's certainly _undeserved_ suffering was to force the others around her to "become better people" than they previously were.  If not for Rachel, Greg would have almost certainly slept through (lost) his senior year and possibly a good part of the rest of his life.  Faced with Rachel's suffering, he was forced to "wake up" and respond with kindness. 

Wonderful, what did Rachel get out of it?  One could say that she given her "stage 4 cancer" she would have _died anyway_ (no matter what anyone, including herself, did).  But she did leave the world BETTER (by making both Greg and Earl better people) tham it would have been if she had done nothing with her suffering. 

It makes for an interesting point of departure for reflection (and again remember Dear Readers that I come from a faith tradition, Catholicism, that certainly believes that suffering _can_ be redemptive.

Anyway, a very kind film that could give teens both male and female much to think about.


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The Stanford Prison Experiment [2015]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review  

The Stanford Prison Experiment [2015] (directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, screenplay by Tim Talbott) dramatizes the story of the infamous 1971 experiment conducted by social psychologist Phillip Zimbardo (played in the film by Billy Crudup).  In the experiment, he and his team of graduate students randomly divided a group of Stanford University students (paid $15/day for their participation) into prisoners and guards to populate a make-shift prison they created for the 2 week study in a random corridor in lecture hall on campus that summer.

While the story of this quite infamous (if also _revelatory_) experiment has been told and retold in various forms in decades since -- pretty much every college student in the United States taking an "Intro to Psych" class will come across a paragraph or two about it, the dramatization here will once again make it and its results -- that pretty much anybody given authority with poorly defined / poorly enforced bounds could be turned into an animal by it -- unforgettable.

And that's probably a good thing given the crisis of confidence that the country has undergone during the past several years with regards to members of law enforcement finding themselves (or being caught...) resorting to deadly force far faster than most of us in larger society are comfortable with.  I think that most of us appreciate the work that the police do (and the _dangers_ that they face) to keep law and order and the public safe, but most of us also don't necessarily understand why a routine stop should end-up with the person being stopped / arrested severely roughed-up or dead.  When this starts happening with some frequency, it does require a revisit of procedures (as in fact has been happening) in these past few years, because nobody particularly likes taking human life.

And let's not forget the 2004-2006 post-Iraq War scandal at Abu Ghraib that played out, FOR REAL, over 18 months in almost the exactly same way as this 6 day 1971 experiment played out before a first mesmerized but increasingly aghast Dr. Zimbrano himself had enough:  At Abu Ghraib, a not particularly well motivated / not particularly well well watched of U.S. military reservists (not exactly "the tip of the spear ...") largely out of boredom, but also because they themselves weren't particularly well-watched or given particularly clear rules of engagement ... ended up routinely humiliating and even psychologically torturing _hundreds_ of Iraqi prisoners in their charge, causing  _enormous_ subsequent damage to the United States' reputation abroad after the story inevitably leaked out.

So, as a Community member of mine said at the breakfast table as I was talking about this movie, this is a story with immediate resonance today. 

And I would say that as I watched the film, I wondered if part of the story was really: "This is NOT the way to run a prison (and with the exception of perhaps 'setting up a baseline' this is almost certainly NOT the way to setup an experiment about running a prison)." 

 The guards were given instructions: (1) to "keep order," (2) (for some reason) to DEHUMANIZE the prisoners (by giving the prisoners, male, prison uniforms that were essentially dresses barely covering their genitalia, and calling them ONLY BY NUMBER), and (3) were given the freedom to use any means to do so, SO LONG AS THEY DID NOT HIT THE PRISONER.

So there was, nominally, a "red line" (at resorting to hitting the prisoners).  Yet, the guards were given
night-sticks to at least threaten the prisoners with, and as the trailer to the film already reveals (though perhaps not how quickly things deteriorated to that point) the guards soon found themselves using said night-sticks to keep order, and worse. 

The story, following the trajectory of the actual experiment, unfolds (deteriorates) from there.  Prisoners revolt, prisoners try to escape, prisoners (may) actually get sick (through panic attacks).  And six days into the experiment, the professor himself pulled the plug on the developing Lord of the Flies [wikip] [GR] [Amzn] situation.

Now one could ask actually, how much "acting" was required to tell this story?  Yet, a survey of the actors in the film [IMDb] playing both prisoners and guards reveals that they were all legitimate actors and a fair (even surprising) number of them played in the recent teen-oriented drama The Perks of Being a Wall Flower [2012].  And they certainly played their roles both believably and quite well.

In any case, the story gives viewers much to think about, especially perhaps the importance of setting-up clear rules / procedures with regards to the exercise of authority as well as the need for vigilant oversight NOT necessarily to punish guards / police officials but to quickly / effectively respond to problems with procedures.  A prison that becomes a war-zone is clearly a failed prison.  A traffic stop that ends with the death of the person who was stopped is always, at least at some level, a failure. 


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Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation [2015]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB ()  ChicagoTribune (3 1/2 Stars)  RogerEbert.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (B+)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (M.Z. Seitz) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review  

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation [2015] (directed and screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie story by Christopher McQuarrie and Drew Pearce based on the television series [1966-73] [wikip] [IMDb] by Bruce Geller [wikip] [IMDb]) is certainly one of the best written, best timed / edited / directed and best acted action spy-thriller in a generation and possibly of all time.

For a fair number of years now, film-makers have been trying to crack the challenge of making today's heavily cyber/hacking based spy-fare exciting.  The last Bond film Skyfall [2012] even named / mocked the problem with a scene involving a new, "fresh-out-of college" if ever tech wizard "Q" blithely handing a 40-ish James Bond a revolver that would only fire if his (Bond's) palm was pressed against it, telling the somewhat disappointed / crest-fallen Bond: "Oh, you were expecting an exploding pen or something. Well, we're kind of past that sort of thing now. (Now Mr. Toy-loving Dinasaur let _me_ get back to _my computer terminal_ and get on with the real intel work to be done..." ;-).   Priceless ;-).

Well ... bring on U.S. super-spy Ethan Hunt (played _wonderfully_ by Tom Cruise in almost a divine manifestation of his archetypal Tom Cruise-ishness) working for an agency, the "Impossible Missions Force" SO SECRET that its initials are identical to one of the MOST BORING if ALSO (in the minds of many conspiracy theorists) MOST POWERFUL / NEFARIOUS AGENCIES IN THE WORLD TODAY (the International Monetary Fund ;-).

Okay, it's almost impossible to make lines of code running across a computer screen look exciting.  Just ask the makers of the last Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit [2014] movie ;-).

BUT ... what if TO GET AT those "spreadsheets" _upon which_ THE FATE OF THE WORLD HANGS (!!), one has to get past THREE LAYERS of "biometric" pass codes (ie REQUIRING A REAL PERSON AGAIN ... ;-).  And the ONLY WAY TO GET "YOUR GUY" (hacker) to get recognized "by the system" is TO HAVE SOME ELSE (Ethan Hunt) DIVE INTO A TANK AT THE BOTTOM OF A COOLING TOWER OF SOME SUPER-SECRET FACILITY LOCATED IN SOME WONDEROUSLY _SIMULTANEOUSLY_ "OUT OF THE WAY" YET SUPER EXOTIC LOCALE, WHERE INSIDE SAID TANK YOU HAVE TO INSTALL A _COMPUTER CARD_ AMONG MANY OTHERS, WITH YOUR AGENT'S BIOMETRIC INFO (forget finger prints or retinal scans but recordings of the way he/she walks, talks, smiles, even ticks as he/she talks, etc), WHILE ALL SORTS OF ROBOTIC / MECHANICAL THINGS ARE SPINNING ABOUT IN SAID TANK as part of BOTH NORMAL and SECURITY OPERATIONS.

NOW _THAT'S_ a "MISSION IMPOSSIBLE" ... Ya betcha baby! ;-).  Add then a Swedish born, British agent (one hopes...) Isla Faust (played by Rebecca Furgeson) who's SO DEEP COVER ... "in" with SO MANY shadowy, underworld groups / agencies that she herself becomes a living embodiment of the Talking Heads song "Life during Wartime" [Amzn] ("I've got three passports, a couple of visas, no longer know my own name" ... "changed my hairstyle so many times now, can't remember what I look like").  Yet, SHE's placed herself closest to the nefarious Lane (played by Sean Harris) who (may) head an ultra-pathological terrorist network called "The Syndicate" made up of other super-highly trained former spies / assassins from all kinds of agencies from across the world.  None of them really knows what they stand for anymore, but ALL of them know that they have the skills to can get whatever they want ... and most, like Lane, presumably want "A HECK OF A LOT..."

So this then is the "10-20 stories down in the deep, DEEP BASEMENT BUNKER of the underworld" in which "IMF" super agent Ethan Hunt lives/works, along with his still somewhat handler / boss William Brandt (played by Jeremy Brenner), and his "tech guy" buddies Benji Dunn (played by Simon Pegg) and Luther Stikell (played by Ving Ranes).  Even C.I.A. chief Alan Huntley (played in inspiringly well-meaning but clueless manner by Alec Baldwin) doesn't know what's going on let alone Congress (that's supposed to "give oversight" to all of this).  Interestingly though, British Intelligence seems to know _exactly_ what's what ... EVEN IF they're having increasing trouble "controlling" it all (shades of The Good Shephard [2006]). 

Much, much, much ensues ... honestly, this is one heck of a ride (again) ... and if only 5-10% of the action was based on reality ("renditions" can't possibly be "pretty" ...), this would help explain why so much of Europe both loves and hates us since the beginning of the Cold War.

Anyway, one, one heck of a story!


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Vacation [2015]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  ChicagoTribune (0 Stars)  RogerEbert.com (1 Star)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RogerEbert.com (G. Kenny) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review  

Vacation [2015] (screenplay and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein characters based on those created by John Hughes in Vacation [1983]) "is what it is" ...  Like the Harold Ramis directed, Chevy Chase / Beverly D'Angelo starring original, it's an appropriately R-rated "family comedy" that has its laughs, seeks at times to gross-out and yet is fundamentally family supporting, indeed "pro-Family."  As such, like the 1983 original, I do believe that the film will almost certainly be embraced by the vast majority of the families, both "Anglo" (mostly Slavic) and Hispanic, of a parish like mine and probably the vast majority of Catholic families across the country even as it is at times unnecessarily crude and in a strict sense deserves the "O" (morally offensive) rating that the CNS/USCCB gives it.

So why give a film an endorsement even as it is, again strictly speaking, morally offensive?  I think I do so because I do believe that a lot of families will see themselves (or their shadows) within it.

The now grown Rusty Griswald (played in wonderful "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" fashion by Ed Helms) has basically become his dad (played marvelously by Chevy Chase in the original).  He's become both an airline pilot (!) and "a loser" _choosing_ (we find out later) to fly for a ridiculously small-time regional airline called Econoair: "Welcome to our 18 minute flight from South Bend to Chicago..." is his first line in the film ;-).

His wife, former sorority girl, but now later-30-something mom Debbie (IMHO wonderfully captured by Christina Applegate) is an increasingly forced-smile "trooper" who's trying _really hard_ to remain "nice" but is obviously increasingly disappointed at the pedestrian state of their lives/marriage: "Remember Rusty when you were training to be a pilot?  You / we were supposed to be flying to Paris [and here you're flying back and forth between Ft. Wayne and Chicago]."  "Yes honey, but this way I can be home each night ..." (and he sincerely means it ;-)

Their two boys are priceless(ly disappointing/disconcerting ;-).  There's 14-15 year old "übersensitive" James (played by Skyler Gisondo) who plays the acoustic guitar, keeps "a dream journal" and writes poetry, while his 10-12 year old younger brother Kevin (played by Steele Stebbins) is just plain Evil ;-).

After Rusty comes home after his last 18 minute flight of the day between some random town in Indiana /  SW Michigan and Chicago (and after waiting 25 minutes for the "next shuttle" to his car ;-) ;-) he's confronted by James complaining: "Daaaad, see what Kevin did!" (In indelible ink, Kevin wrote on James' guitar "I have a vagina").  Kevin protests: "But dad, I swear he does!"  "Now Kevin, you know that's not true."  "But it is!"  "Dooo something dad," James begs.  "Don't worry James, we'll fix this." (Rusty takes Kevin's marker, crosses out "vagina" and writes "penis" instead), "but for now, this will have to do" ... and proceeds to look for Debbie to give her a kiss ;-).

LOL ... domestic life today:  One son "can't tie his own shoelaces" (without "dreaming" about them...) and the other one may well grow-up to be a school shooter ;-)

Anyway, facing a family revolt about "vacation" this year (NO ONE 'cept him wants to go to the "some ole cabin" in Cheboygan, Michigan), Rusty comes up with the idea of re-creating the 1983 trip to "Wally World" that _he_ took with his family back when he was James / Kevin's age.  "But dad, I don't even remember you talking about that vacation."  "Don't worry son, this vacation will stand on its own."  Much ensues ...

This includes a stop at Debbie's alma mater Memphis State U, where Rusty finds out that the sisters at her sorority still remember her as the legendary "Debbie does Anything...," another stop at a ranch in Texas, where Rusty's sister Audrey (played here by Leslie Mann) is now married to a ridiculously well-endowed looker / dumb-DUMB-Ass "TV meteorologist" named Stone Crandall (played by an ever smiling / often "prosthetic wearing," one hopes anyway ... Chris Hemsworth ;-); and a final pre-Wally World stop in San Francisco, visiting mom and dad, Clark and Ellen Griswald (played by Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo) at their characteristically well-meaningly but incompetently run B&B.

Honestly, it's a heck of a ride (again).  The R-rating is certainly deserved, but honestly, it's also an "R-rated FAMILY movie" which REGULAR Catholics from Boston to Scranton to Gary to L.A. would certainly understand: Family life is _often corny_, it's often a sacrifice, often "not like what one would want it to be" but it ALSO brings with it all kinds of wonderful, unexpected joys.

And as a final, somewhat spoiler alert:  Rusty does find a way to take Debbie to Paris.  How, I'm not going to reveal, but it is appropriate, funny, kind and ... appreciated.  Again, thankfully Debbie's also and above all "a trooper" ;-)

Great film!


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Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! [2015]

MPAA (TV-14)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (F)  Fr. Dennis (4+ Stars)

IMDb listing
NY Times (N. Genzlinger) review
ChiTrib/Variety review
RogerEbert.com (P. Sobczynski) review
AVClub (C. Framke) review


Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! [2015] (directed by Anthony C. Ferrante, screenplay by Thunder Levin) is a made-for-TV-movie that recently premiered on the SyFy channel [wikip] that I was averted to by a high school friend of mine / "actual fan" of my blog ;-) saying: "You've got to see / write about this film." ;-)

Though this was a "made-for-TV movie" and I generally don't review at least television series (they require a greater commitment of time than I can generally give them) as a lifelong fan of truly / intentionally "b-movies" how could I resist?  And the SyFy channel dutifully re-played the first two films in this series prior to this the third in a "Sharknado" marathon.  So by the time the current film was playing, I was "up to speed." ;-)

Oh what a chainsaw buzzing, blood splattering geyser of razor-toothed mahem ;-).  The basic premise of the film franchise is that "climate change" ;-) has resulted storms so powerful that tornadoes would form over the oceans picking-up sharks, thousands upon thousands of them -- great whites, hammer-heads, tiger sharks -- out of the sea, and then dump them spinning, crashing (and of course BITING) down on the utterly stunned populaces below.  In the first Sharknado [2013] film, one such cyclone of devastation rained / tore down upon Los Angeles.  Sharknado 2: The Second One [2014], "post superstorm Sandy" ;-) rained a similar spinning cyclone of carnivorous mayhem upon New York.

In the current film, a "sharknado" first struck and devastated Washington D.C. and _then a whole line of them_ was threatening to agglomerate into a "Sharkicane" threatening the whole U.S. seaboard from Florida to Maine.

Can one sustain such an impossibly insane story-line?  YES!  Dear Readers, improbably, impossibly, but IMHO YES!  Now in my teenage years, there was a phrase "jumping the shark" recalling a crazy, silly really, episode of the up-to-then successful, but clearly running out of steam, television series Happy Days [1974-1984] [IMDb], that took the cast out to Florida "on vacation" for an episode and then as had one of the lead characters, Fonzi, improbably "jump over a shark" on water skis as the episode's cliff-hanging climax.  That proved to be the death-knell of the series.  Where does one go from there?

Well here the creators of the Sharknado films have confidently moved the improbable, impossible, crazy story to such ever higher, ever more impossibly insane heights -- "into the upper atmosphere" WTF all the way UP INTO SPACE :-) -- that I just have to say, that UNTIL THE FOURTH MOVIE COMES OUT (already threatened at the end of this third one ;-) WE JUST  DON'T KNOW, yet, if they "jumped the freakin' shark" ;-) ;-)

What a run, what an _unbelievable_ run ... of blood-splattering ever "life-as-we-know-it" threatening mayhem ;-)

So then, WHY ??? would such a _stupid_ concept involving whirling "shark-laden vortices of death" work?  WHY sharks?

Well, what's a shark?  It's basically an utterly merciless blood(let)-seeking biological torpedo.   By lore, even the smallest of cuts, that is even the smallest objective evidence of slight imperfection / failure, summons these creatures from miles away to attack / devour / destroy the unfortunate "loser" in this the world's "game of the survival of the fittest."  Then ever since Steven Spielberg's Jaws [1975], viewers have been reminded that sharks come at us "from below," "pull us down" (overwhelm / drown us) and only _then_ devour us.  In a hyper-competitive world when any flaw/weakness in our character or presentation can "bring us down" to our destruction, the metaphor of living / working "in a shark tank" is one that we CAN -- at least in our nightmares -- completely understand.

But ... up until ... these "Sharknado" films ;-) ... the problem with employing a shark in a disaster film storyline was, of course, that sharks ... live in the water.

That's IMHO the _genius_ of these films: They combine "anxiety over climate change" and fear of tornadoes (again vicious, utterly uncontrollable storms of tightly circling winds that destroy everything in their paths) with SHARKS.  These "sharknados" lift sharks out of the water and SPEW THEM, TEETH FIRST, in all directions, devouring the stunned / hapless onlookers in their paths: "[Sharks] in Georgia?  How'd they ever get here?" ;-).  How'd they ever get there, indeed/ ;-)  The concept of the "shark-nado" is both _insane_ and (as a metaphor) _brilliant_ ;-)

So this being the third Sharknado film, by this time, one would think that the creators of the Sharknado series would have consumed all that could possibly be done with a bunch of (okay, a whole lot of, THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of) sharks and a weather formation / tornado.  But no ;-) ;-) ...

In the first film began with one-time surfer / since then SoCal beach bar owner Fin Shepard (played by Ian Ziering) and his staff, notably young still college age bartender Nova Clarke (played by Casie Scerbo), being confronted with the freak storm that produced the first "Sharknado" out in Southern California.   Their ingenuity / bravery saves L.A. as they come with the idea of "dropping bombs from helicopters" into the sharknadoes to dissipate them.  

By the beginning of the third installment, Fin Shepard is a national hero for having saved (along with Nova and her friends) Los Angeles in the first installment and (with the experience he acquired, largely alone) New York in the second.  Indeed the third installments begins with him being honored at the White House by the President (played by Mark Cuban) and (somewhat improbably) vice president (played by Ann Coulter) and presented with a "golden chainsaw" in honor of his bravery / ingenuity.  With a new storm heading toward Washington D.C., he finds that he has to use said "golden chain saw" to defend the President and his Party from the onslaught of whirling, ever hungry sharks _tearing down_ on the city from "on high." 

After that initial Sharknado, he finds himself reunited with Nova Clarke who since the first episode has gone to college, entered / left the military and with her new "bio-meteorologist" boyfriend Lukas (played by Frankie Muniz) has become a "sharknado chaser" and perhaps the world's preeminent expert on all things "sharknado."

She and Lukas are the ones who warn Fin and then various authorities that these sharknadoes "were evolving" ;-) : First, sharks were being thrown increasingly into the upper atmosphere (hence why when at film's end some appear all the freakin' way out in space, it's no longer completely a surprise ;-).  Further, these flying sharks are starting to live on birds (rather than fish) and so are able to survive up there in the sky indefinitely.  Finally, the storms themselves are becoming larger and more numerous, agglomerating in the climax into a line of storms that threaten the whole Eastern seaboard of the United States, requiring not merely "bombs" to dissipate them but some kind of blast from space.

This then carries the film, set after its "sharks over DC" prologue to central Florida -- Orlando and the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Caneveral -- and eventually, inevitably into "outer space."  It turns out that Fin's estranged dad (played by David Hasselhoff) had walked away from Fin and the rest of the family decades back as he become involved in all kinds of "secret" military-space projects for the NSA / NASA.  And now he has to be recruited by Fin, Nova and the others to "tip his hand" about said "secret military space projects" to help them "save the world" from this "line of sharknadoes"  Much, improbable, _crazy_, but FUN ensues ...

The presence of complicated / strained "family ties" within Fin's family, of course, fulfills a very important requirement in Hollywood B-movie disaster films: The story's NOT just about "saving the world" from "giant radioactive crabs" or "space blobs" or, in this case, "shark infested tornadoes" ... some "issues at home" have to be resolved as well.  And the sharknado trilogy is filled with such "family drama":

In the first film, Fin was being dumped by his wife April (played by Tara Reid) and daughter Claudia (played by Ryan Newman) because as a washed-out surfer, now mere owner of a beach-side bar, he was "going nowhere."  So amidst the sharknadoes bearing down on Los Angeles, he has save his estranging wife/daughter from the onslaught.  And .... he does.

By the time of this third episode, Fin's back, indeed more than back, with his wife April: they're expecting a new child.  But we find that he has this new problem with his dad (a dad who he hasn't talked to in decades) and he has renewed (though lesser) problems with his teenage daughter, who's pouting somewhat (on vacation at Universal City in Orlando) because "fame" has taken away Fin's attention from her (and well, let's face it, with a new "baby brother or sister on the way" ... BOTH her parents are inevitably focusing on the soon-to-be arrival of the new baby).  ALL _THIS_ has to be "resolved" by film's end and ... IT IS ... SPECTACULARLY :-) ;-)

Anyway, a number of the critics above have gotten tired of this third Sharknado episode.  I honestly believe that they're being WILDLY UNGRATEFUL ;-) though perhaps because I'm "just coming on board" I'm just presently "in love."  But I have to say that this is ONE OF THE FUNNIEST, MOST IMPOSSIBLY CRAZY "DISASTER FILMS" THAT I'VE EVER SEEN and I am happily -- SMILING FROM EAR TO EAR -- looking forward to the next one! ;-)

So GREAT JOB FOLKS at the SyFy Network, GREAT JOB! ;-)


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