13 Minutes (orig. Elser) [2015]

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

IMDb listing

Zeit.de (M. Schwickert) interview w. director*

SuddeutscheZeitung.de (M. Knoben) review*
FAZ.net (A. Kilb) review*

Spiegel.de (B. Moldenhauer) review*

Welt.de (B. Möller) review*

Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (G. Kenny) review


13 Minutes (orig. Elser) [2015] (directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, screenplay by Léonie-Claire Breinersdorfer and Fred Breinersdorfer) tells the sad story of Georg Elser [de.wikip]*[en.wikip] (played in the film by Christian Friedel) a random somewhat solitary carpenter / machine shop worker (something of a mix of Edward Snowden and Lee Harvey Oswald ...) from small town Bavaria who came to the conclusion that the Nazi leadership must die and on Nov 8, 1939 (a few months after the Nazi invasion of Poland with which World War II began) came within thirteen minutes of blowing Hitler up at a Nazi rally at the Bürgerbräukeller [de.wikip]*[en.wikip] in Munich .  A large beer hall, the Bürgerbräukeller had been ground zero of Hitler's failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch and hence had become something of a Nazi shrine, the site of solemn annual tributes and commemorations during the whole of the Nazi Era.  Elser had hoped to blow-up Hitler along with a good part of the Nazi Leadership while Hitler was speaking at the 1939 edition of said commemorative event.

Both the genius and tragedy of Elser's attempt on Hitler's life was that Elser came BOTH _very close_ to getting his man (Hitler just happened to end his speech early that evening and had left the rally only thirteen minutes before the bomb went off) AND _nearly_ got away:  He was quite randomly picked-up at the relatively nearby border between Germany and Switzerland.  The German guard who had quite accidentally come-upon him had INITIALLY NO IDEA of the significance of the man he was arresting as the bomb that Elser had set, hidden in a column behind the speakers' podium at the Bürgerbräukeller, had not yet even gone off ....

Well, the bomb went off, and Elser had with him incriminating pictures / drawings of the Bürgerbräukeller linking him to the bomb plot ... (Sigh ... why hadn't he gotten rid of them?)

Soon he was being interrogated (and tortured ...) under the direction of Gestapo investigator Arthur Nebe [de.wikip]*[en.wikip] (played in the film by Burghart Klaußner) and the shadowy Gestapo co-head Heinrich Müller [de.wikip]*[en.wikip] (played in the film by Johann von Bülow).  Interestingly Arthur Nebe himself was executed in March, 1945 for his involvement in the July 1944 Claus von Stauffenberg Plot [de.wikip]*[en.wikip] against Hitler.  Heinrich Müller, in contrast, was last reported to have been seen in the Führerbunker [de.wikip]*[en.wikip] in Berlin on May 1, 1945 and remains the highest ranking Nazi to have neither been captured nor confirmed to have died at the end of the war.  He simply vanished.

Elser, for his part, was _not_ executed immediately after the Nazi interrogators "were done with him."  (It took a while for them to become convinced that he _really did_ "act alone").  Instead, he spent most of the war in the Dachau Concentration Camp [de.wikip]*[en.wikip] where he was executed in the closing weeks of the war.

The film really offers a quite fascinating picture of a complex (and contradictory...) "simple man" who _nearly_ did the world an enormous favor by _nearly_ getting rid of one of the most Evil figures in human history.

But that _may be_ the point of Elser's tragic story.  It / HE wasn't enough ...


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The House [2017]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
Los Angeles Times () review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub () review


The House [2017] (directed and cowritten by Andrew Jay Cohen along with Brendan O'Brien), crude / appropriately R-rated, could be described as Amy Poehler Parks & Recreation [2009-2015] mashed with every movie that Will Farrell has ever made.

The two play Kate and Scott Johansen proud-as-punch that their only daughter / mutual "best friend" (yup, kinda creepy) Alex (played wonderfully by Ryan Simpkins) got accepted to Stanford University-like "Bucknell U."  Loveble, kind, but not at all financially practical, of course, Kate and Scott have made NO PLANS WHATSOEVER to save-up for the big day when their Alex was gonna go off to school.  Instead, they were BANKING on "straight A" Alex getting a full-ride scholarship traditionally offered by their town.

But newly elected, pettily corrupt dweeb of a quiet suburban town mayor, "Bob" (played spot-on wonderfully by Nick Kroll) has decided to sink the town's funds into his pocket, err ... into a ridiculously elaborate (and probably never, ever to be built) "aquatic complex" (read glorified town swimming pool) instead.  When the Johansens protest this sudden and previously unannounced change in the town's practices, "Mayor Bob" puts the scholarship "for the Johansens and their 'smarty pants' daughter Alex ONLY" vs the ridiculously bright colored / elaborate "pie in the sky" "aquatic complex for _ALL_" to "a vote" ... and ...

What to do? ... Kate decides that she'll go back to work, but where ... she's been out of the workforce for years.  Scott decides to ask his generally amiable (but well versed in / exhausted with the petty assumptions of "white privilege") African American boss for a raise.  "Not a chance" the boss answers even before Scott finishes his question, (and in the film's out-takes shown at the end of the film, challenges Scott, "Okay, I'll give you a raise if you can name even ONE of my three lovely kids" (a proud picture of the boss and his smiling cute-as-a-button kids sits prominently on his desk, as it probably has FOR YEARS ;-)  Of course Scott CAN'T REMEMBER the name of EVEN ONE OF HIS BOSS' KIDS ;-).

So ... with little options ... the two get talked into a truly hair-brained scheme concocted by a friend named Frank (played wonderfully in bug-eyed fashion by Jason Mantzoukas) whose wife was leaving him and was in the midst losing his house BECAUSE OF A GAMBLING ADDICTION to go in with him on running AN ILLEGAL CASINO out of his house because ... as EVERYBODY KNOWS ... "The House ALWAYS wins" ;-)

Much, often in quite hilarious "Suburban Goodfellas" fashion, ensues ... ;-)

This is a movie that hasn't exactly gotten "much love" from the critics (above) but I do have a soft spot for these "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" style of films ;-).  Exaggerated as the film may have been, _every one of characters_ in this film could have easily been a parishioner ;-).

SO... obviously DON'T DO WHAT THE JOHANSENS DID AT HOME ... ;-) ... and parents remember that this is an R-rated movie but ... when the kids are asleep or on date night ... enjoy the film ;-).  Yes, things can be worse ... ;-)


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Beguiled [2017]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (S. O'Malley) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review


Beguiled [2017] (written for the screen and directed by Sofia Coppola, based on the screenplay by Albert Maltz and Irene Kamp (credited as Grimes Grice) for the 1971 Clint Eastwood starring film by the same name, based on the novel [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Thomas Cullinan [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is billed as this summer's "guilty pleasure" and, if you'd like a lazy but steamy Confederate Era SAH-THERN tale that takes its time to get to an inevitable pot-boiling / corset-ripping climax (of sorts) with a final twist, well ... ;-) ... I've generally enjoyed Sofia Coppola's [1] [2] [3] story-telling ;-).

So then, what's the story about?  Corporal McBurney (played by Colin Farrell), a young just-off-the-boat-in-New-York-harbor-before-he-got-paid-300-dollars-to-join-the-Union-Army Irishman finds himself wounded near but behind enemy lines somewhere in Virginia and in the care of a boarding house (Seminary School) for young Southern women headed by a proper-but-practical perhaps mid-30-something Miss Martha (played wonderfully by Nicole Kidman).  Talk about "The Luck of the Irish," right?

Well ... it's, of course, more complicated than that.  These young women / girls are Southern patriots, of course, with fathers, brothers and beaus "defending the Homeland" in this "War for Southern Independence" / "War of Northern Aggression."  But then Corporal McBurney is ... A MAN, and these young women, for multiple reasons, haven't exactly seen much of "their kind" in recent times.   And then McBurney is not necessarily the typical "Yankee" that they would have expected ... Again, he was barely "off the boat" when "for $300" he was given "a gun and a uniform" and shipped to the front lines to "fight for the North."

Well much winking / flirting, working its way to a slow boil, takes place as several of the young and perhaps at-the-edge-of-no-longer-being-all-that-young women (played by an exemplary cast that includes the above mentioned Nicole Kidman, as well as Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning) plot their strategies of "getting their man."

It is indeed ... one fun movie ;-).


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Baby Driver [2017]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  RogerEbert.com (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (A-)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review


Baby Driver [2017] (written and directed by Edgar Wright) is an EXCELLENT, slick, doesn't miss a beat, (crime story) genre film that should make Hollywood proud.  Fictional, yes, with a morally edgy -- yes, they're bank robbers, yes, they're mostly psycho and/or evil and certainly doing evil things, "but" ... we do "get to know them ..." -- story, though set in contemporary Atlanta (nicely in the heart of the Bible Belt...), the story's trajectory is that of classic noirish gangster movies of the "Production Code" past (where Good ultimately had to be vindicated, and Evil could not be left to survive or let alone thrive...).

The story centers on "Baby" (played by Ansel Elgort) a prodigy of a "get-away driver" with a number of "psychological-ticks" born of "a tragic back-story":  He had been a kid, sitting in the back seat of his parents car when they, too busy yelling at each other to pay attention to the road, were crushed after crashing into the raised back of a stopped-semi on the freeway.  The resulting crash / explosion damaged his ears (making him listen incessantly to music on his iphone to drown-out a similarly constant "humm in his drum").  The accident also made him _really good_ at split-second averting of obstacles while driving on the road, or as we see in _beautifully choreographed_ 5+ minute _continuous shot scene_ (while the film's opening credits rolled) ...simply walking down the street ;-).  (Again, this is an _very_ well-crafted film)

Left without parents, "Baby" was raised by a foster parent, interestingly with a Biblical name, Joseph (played by CJ Jones), who we see the now early 20-something "Baby" taking care-of during the course of the film.  "Baby's" "swerve to get by" driving antics also had caught the attention of a local Atlanta-based gangster kingpin going by the nickname "Doc" (played wonderfully in ice-cold sociopathic fashion by Kevin Spacey), who then lured / blackmailed him into serving as the getaway driver for his bank-robbing crews.

Said crews often question the capabilities of incessantly headphone wearing "Baby," but "Doc" repeatedly went "to bat" for his young driver prodigy, noting "Has he (or I...) _ever_ steered you wrong?"

But as good as "Baby" is at what he does, and even as good of a heart has "Baby" does seem to have "in his off time" ... again, he takes care of his older, mute step-father Joseph quite well, and he strikes up a lovely (and refreshingly chaste) "made for Hollywood genre flicks" romance with a lovely, ever-smiling diner waitress named Debora (played wonderfully by Lily James) ... he's making a living in crime.

And that, of course, must change ...

How his life does change (and I'm not going to get into this further, because that would enter deep into Spoiler Territory) is truly in the best tradition of Hollywood genre films of this type, AND IT IS NICE TO SEE THE FILM-MAKERS TAKING THE TIME TO DO THIS RIGHT and not just for the sake of doing "due homage" to films like this of the past, BUT ALSO, FRANKLY, FOR THE SAKE OF THE NEW / YOUNGER GENERATION.

This is a film that Evildoers DO "get their DUE" ... and "Baby" did need to be Saved / Redeemed. For regardless of how "nice of a guy" he was, he still did wrong ... and _some price_ needed to be paid for his transgressions.

Honestly, excellent job!


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Despicable Me 3 [2017]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  RogerEbert.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (0 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (P. Sobczynski) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review


Despicable Me 3 [2017] (directed by Kyle Balda and Pierre Coffin, codirected Eric Guillon, written by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio) like the stupidly racist DM2 [2013] and unlike the 2010 original (which I had thought was brilliant) remains a difficult movie for me to feel good about.

Yes, the Minions (voiced by Pierre Coffin) remain cute. Yes, Agnes (voiced by Elsie Fisher) the youngest adoptive daughter of heart-of-gold, reformed arch-villain, vaguely-East European Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) and super-virtuous/super-ANGLO Miss Hattie (voiced by Kristen Wiig) remains adorable, BUT ... if DM2 [2013] went UTTERLY _OUT OF ITS WAY_ to racially attack Mexicans (!), the current film now GOES OUT OF ITS WAY to attack Gru's "vaguely South / East European background" ...

When Gru goes out with his family to search out his long lost twin brother Dru (voiced also by Steve Carell)... they find him on some "Greek-ish / Serbo-Croatian-like Island" where EVERYBODY seems to _raise PIGS_ (!!) and in probably the most unfortunate scene in the whole film, when a little boy from the Island seems to have fallen for Margo (the oldest of Gru's / Hattie's three adopted girls) OFFERING HER, AMONG OTHER THINGS _HIS PIG_ ... Hattie "STEPS UP" to "PROTECT" HER FROM HIM (and his utterly perplexed mother).

YES, IN THIS _ONE THING_ POPULIST RUSSIAN STRONGMAN VLADIMIR PUTIN IS _EXACTLY RIGHT_: Many Westerners (hence North Americans) seem to think that people from his country, Russia, (and _let's be honest_ from the other countries bordering his, many of whom sincerely believed that they were actually becoming OUR RESPECTED (!) FRIENDS and ALLIES...) are just ONE OR TWO GENERATIONS "FROM THE TREES."

How else to explain this film's portrayal of Gru's "homeland" as a place where people SEEM TO ONLY RAISE _PIGS_ and a local boy (and his mother) are portrayed as CATEGORICALLY UNWORTHY of somehow, again, categorically "more refined / sophisticated" Anglos ...

Yet this is an arrogance that is honestly born of ignorance as anyone who's actually been to Prague, Budapest, Moscow or even Belgrade or Athens would IMMEDIATELY recognize.  (Oh, but what about these countries' hinterlands?  Well, if one _wants to be honest_ none of these places are _categorically different_ from the hinterlands of the United States ... Alabama, Appalachia, Indiana, Kansas / Nebraska ...).

But we seem to insist on our (racial) superiority ... and more problematically, seem to insist on teaching our kids that as well.  Shame.


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Transformers: The Last Knight [2017]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review


Transformers: The Last Knight [2017] (directed by Michael Kay, screenplay by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway and Ken Nolan, story by Akiva Goldsman, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway and Ken Nolan) continues a financially successful (if somewhat diminishingly successful) movie franchise [wikip] based on the Transformer Toys [wikip]  involving two races of giant shape-shifting Robots who've come to Earth with quite mixed motives and in previous episodes have wreaked havoc with contemporary humanity.

In the current episode, humanity seems to have regained some control over its destiny and its relations with the leftover transformer robots in its midst has deepened / become more complex.  Some humans seem to have established a more or less friendly relationship with many of the left-over robots, while others, based on past violent recent history, continue to see them as enemies and in as much as possible want to see them expunged from the earth.  For their part, some of the Transformer robots have proven to be quite kindly / protective of humanity, while others remain a threat.

The current film conflates elements of the legends surrounding King Arthur / Merlin the Magician with other elements from the more recent story of The Da Vinci Code and invites Viewers to believe that the history of interaction between the Transformer Robots and humanity is actually much longer and more complex than previously imagined producing a Transformer Robot / Ancient Aliens [wikip] [IMDb] mash-up of sorts.

Over the years, I've found the Transformer films to be fascinating from a sociological / psychoanalytical point of view.  After all, why would TENS OF MILLIONS of viewers pay good money (smiling from-ear-to-ear, buckets of popcorn in their laps, beverages of choice at their sides...) to sit through two-and-a-half hour to three hour (!!) "Transformer" films in which two races of GIANT shape-shifting transformer robots beat the daylights out of each other, laying to waste huge sections of earthly cities in the process, while "little people" (us) watch helplessly by?

Is this how a surprisingly large portion of humanity sees our world today -- that GIANT "shape shifting" heartless-metallic forces "above them" are battling it out, and that all most of us can do is ... watch (and perhaps occasionally ... duck)?

Anyway, this has been a strange, if IMHO also strangely fascinating series that while never destined for "Oscar Glory" offers an oddly disconcerting view of a good part of contemporary humanity.  


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47 meters down [2017]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Walsh) review
RogerEbert.com (P. Sobczynski) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review


47 meters down [2017] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Johannes Roberts along with Ernest Riera) is a film similar to, if IMHO _far more problematic_, than last year's "shark movie" The Shallows [2016].

In the current film, two young North American women, Lisa and Kate (played by Mandy Moore and Claire Holt respectively), "on vacation" to Mexico consent to (are talked into?) being sent down into shark infested waters in a small metal cage lowered into the sea from an already quite rickety-looking local commercial fishing boat, and ... much (often terrible...) ... ensues.

I suppose the message to young Western / North American tourists is: Don't be idiots (!).  It's one thing to "not be racist" / to _try_ to experience local indigenous culture BUT ... most people, both North American or far more _local_, taking ONE LOOK AT THAT BOAT, and _NOT QUESTIONING_ the intentions of the crew would say: "No gracias, no se ofenden pero no me pongo en esa barca ..." ("No thanks, don't be offended but there's NO WAY that I'm getting on that boat much less in that cage...") and that'd be that.

But in this film, we have _two_ naive North American women taking a really bad risk with a number of local (and one must call this for what it is) "men of darker complexion" whose motives while _perhaps_ not evil were nonetheless _necessarily inscrutable_ and ...

And let's be totally honest here: About 15 years ago, a young and perhaps quite naive North American woman, Natalee Holloway, disappeared on a high school senior trip to the still WHITE DOMINATED Dutch colonial possession of Aruba (an island in the Caribbean) and was probably killed and perhaps even _thrown to the sharks_ (to dispose of her body, never found...), while in the company of a VERY WHITE Dutch colonial local named Joran van der Sloot who while never convicted of a crime in Holloway's tragedy, some years later was convicted of murdering a local Peruvian woman while on vacation in Peru.

So the racial undertones of this film in which two white North American women find themselves (or put themselves) in danger while in the company of _darker skinned_ "locals" while on vacation are ... well, at minimum _unfortunate_ and perhaps even _wildly unfair_.

I wonder if the film would have been "better" if the two North Americans had been a young heterosexual couple (or perhaps themselves of color_), so the film would have not been about _just_ "naive young white women folk in danger... (and in need of "protection"....)" 

In any case, it's not racist to say to tell a group of young men, be they "of color" or "dashing red-mained" _white men_, descendants perhaps even of former slave owners, to say: "Hey, WE DON'T KNOW YOU, and there's NO WAY we're getting on THAT BOAT (or ANY BOAT) with you"

But then that would make for a very different movie ...

In contrast, Blake Lively's surfer in The Shallows [2016] faced _simply_  ... a really big, really driven ... shark.  Again, a much better and much less problematic film.

So while certainly "giving thrills" and perhaps serving as _a cautionary tale_ the current film is IMHO quite fatally mixed with unfortunate racial undertones that needent have had to have been there (and if they weren't would have made for a much better film) -- 1 Star.


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