The Mountain Between Us [2017]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review


The Mountain Between Us [2017] (directed by Hany Abu-Assad, screenplay by Chris Weitz story by J. Mills Goodloe based on the novel [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Charles Martin [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is probably the high romance of the season, if not the year, it's chief competitor for this title being The Big Sick [2017]:

Two quite attractive adults, Alex Martin (played by Kate Winslet) a photojournalist, white, and Ben Bass (played by Idris Elba) a neurosurgeon, British of African descent, stuck presumably in Spokane, Washington / Moscow, Idaho, because of an impending blizzard decide on Alex' suggestion to hire a charter plane to Denver before said storm arrives.  He has a surgery to perform in New Jersey the next day, she has her wedding to make.  All goes well until ... the pilot has a heart attack and the plane crashes / they survive up in the heights / wilds of the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho ... in the height of winter.  What to do?  He's strong / thoughtful but cautious, she's injured but more intuitive / willing to take risks (in order to survive).  How are they going to get down the mountain they find themselves on, after they realize all the layers of communication that was available to them (and to even to the pilot) NO ONE really knows that they are up there?  Much ensues ...


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17th Annual Shriekfest L.A.[2017]

Every year, as Halloween approaches, several festivals dedicated to simple / indie often gleefully low budget horror films take place here in Los Angeles and elsewhere ('tis the season ...).  Of the films that played recently at the 17th Annual "Shriekfest L.A.", I was able to view and review the following:

Mercy Christmas [2017] (directed and cowritten by Ryan Nelson along with Beth Levy Nelson) is a quite simple film with a fairly strong message.  It's about a family that would harvest lonely people and otherwise "losers" and then cook them / eat them for Christmas.  True, it's an exaggeration, but that's then what low budget indie horror films often are, and well, the point is well taken / understood.  I've known all kinds of otherwise "good people" who "roasted people" that they didn't understand (and at times have _chosen_ to not understand) in effect forfeiting their "good people" label, though often not understanding what they are doing.  Yes, for a Catholic priest, this film was not easy to watch, but again ... I do, and most others seeing the film would ... understand -- 3 Stars.

The Glass Coffin (orig. El ataúd de cristal) [2016] [IMDb] [FA.es]* (directed and cowritten by Haritz Zubillaga [IMDb] [FA.es]* along with Aitor Eneriz [IMDb]) is actually a quite respected horror film that comes from the Basque Country of Spain, about a Spanish actress (played by Paula Bontempi) on her way to receive a "Lifetime Achievement Award" finds herself trapped in her limo and ... forced to confront (fairly / unfairly?) some of the sins of her past.  I suppose the one thing that I would suggest if a North American version of this film were contemplated (especially given the current revelations surrounding Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein [wikip], following other accusations directed at Bill Cosby [wikip] and previously Woody Allen [wikip] and even Roman Polanski [wikip]) that the one being confronted by one's past be _male_ and perhaps even a director / producer.  Otherwise, quite excellent and certainly discussion evoking film -- 3 1/2 Stars  



The Shift [2017] (directed by Louis Benjamin Del Guercio, written by Gregory Alan Ballard) is another fun / low-budget horrow movie, this time of the "SciFi" / "body-snatcher" variety.  Twenty-something Steve and Jeremy, friends from high school days (and played by Reese Mishler and Paul Woodfolk respectively) go on a ride-along with Jeremy's uncle, an Indianapolis P.D. officer, presumably working on a documentary piece on the Indianapolis P.D. find themselves getting more than they bargain for:  At a routine traffic stop, their IPD officer ends up being killed by the person he stopped, who behaves very much like a zombie.  What's going on?  Much often over-the-top / amusing ensues ... ;-) --  3 Stars.


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

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Battle of the Sexes [2017]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review


Battle of the Sexes [2017] (directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, written by Simon Beaufoy) proved as many of the reviews above indicated, a surprisingly nice / crowd-pleasing film about an event, that I DO REMEMBER WATCHING (as a 10 year old of Czech immigrant parents; we Czechs do/did love our Tennis...) and do remember wondering (even as said 10 year old) WHY THE HECK THIS MATCH WAS EVEN BEING PLAYED: Billie Jean King [wikip] (played in the film wonderfully, to Oscar consideration heights, as a still wide-eyed 20-something with so much of her life still so far far ahead of her by Emma Stone) was the top women's tennis player in the world at the time and Bobby Riggs [wikip] (played again wonderfully by Steve Carell who has a history of playing these quite challenging / often seemingly, initially anyway, utterly unsympathetic roles) seemed to me (as said 10 year old) as "just a random dude from some random country club" who had decided to propose this insulting match just to, yes, humiliate women.

As such, I didn't exactly "knock the door down" to see this movie.  I saw it at the lowest possible price that I could and at a time that didn't inconvenience me in any conceivable way, AND YET ... I came out LOVING THE FILM and while yes, there's a crowd-pleasing "for the whole (contemporary) family" feel to the film ... I'd consider this to be _one of the best_ North American films of the year, whether it gets Oscar nominations or not.

Why did I like the film so much?  Well, above all because the script (and the actors) HUMANIZED both of the film's central characters.  Billie Jean King [wikip], famously came-out as a lesbian (or at least bi) a number of years after this match.  In doing so, she became probably the most famous openly Lesbian person of her generation and this made her incredibly controversial at the time.

YET the film reminds Viewers that AT THE TIME, she was in good part "just a twenty-something person" STILL HONESTLY TRYING TO FIGURE HERSELF OUT.  All of us are (or will be) "twenty-somethings."  I found Emma Stone's portrayal of  Billie Jean King at that time incredibly NICE / COMPELLING (and it's not often that those two words are put together as such): It's next to impossible to _not wish_ her character well, as all of us who've been "twenty-something" will remember (or are invited to remember) what it was like to still have "the whole world open to you" and still trying to figure-out what role one was going to play in it.  My hat off to Emma Stone and to the film makers here.  This was a beautiful insight into Billie Jean King's character at that time in her life.  And again, one _can not but wish her character well_.

Then Steve Carell's portrayal of Bobby Riggs [wikip] was _also compelling_.  We're reminded that he wasn't "just a random dude from some country club."  He himself had been, okay, a generation before, a US Open and even Wimbledon winner.  Yes, tennis, both men's and women's, had been different then (an "amateur sport" and hence, largely, the province of very, very rich people), but then his challenge to first Margaret Court [wikip] (a tennis rival of Billie Jean King and played in the film by Jessica McNamee) at the time and then Billie Jean King herself was _not random_.  Further, he did have playful / smiling "carnival barker" side to him that was in fact both interesting and even endearing.

And ultimately, circus though it was, this match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs really did "change the world" in a way that TRULY FEW (and I can't think of any others) ever did.  NEVER AGAIN was women's tennis considered _any_ "less of a sport" than men's tennis, an accomplishment that has few equivalents.

What I found remarkable about this film was that it was able to "tell the story" in a thoughtful / challenging way that _still_ allows "the whole family to watch."  GREAT, GREAT JOB ;-)


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Blade Runner 2049 [2017]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

To begin, Blade Runner 2049 [2017] (directed by Denis Villeneuve, screenplay by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green, story by Hampton Fancher based on the characters from the novel "Do Androids Dream Electronic Sheep?" [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Philip K. Dick [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is A SUPREMELY WORTHY SEQUEL both stylistically and thematically to the neo-noir scify dystopian classic Blade Runner [1982] [wikip] [IMDb] that helped define the SciFy genre _for_ my generation (Yes, we all loved Gene Roddenberry's far more optimistic Star Trek series / franchise and the wondrous possibilities of the "space bar" scene in the first Star Wars [1977] [wikip] [IMDb] film, but I can not think of a single SciFi enthusiast of my generation who was not left simply in awe -- even if it was an awe tinged with disappointment / horror (over the vision of the future, our future, portrayed) -- by that first Blade Runner [1982] [wikip] [IMDb] film).

Set a generation (thirty years) after the first Blade Runner film -- which was nominally set in a rainy Hong Kong / Tokyo resembling dystopic Los Angeles of 2019 -- the current film continues with the post-apocalyptic feel (exact cause/causes unclear), with Los Angeles (and Southern California, all the way to Las Vegas) covered with a persistent sulfur-like (urine evoking) yellowish and ashy / snowy (?) haze (if the latter is true, then so much for global warming, but ...).  The sulfur / ash evokes evokes the 17th Canto of Dante's Inferno (reserved for back then called Usurers, today perhaps for overly greedy Bankers / Capitalists, sentenced to an eternity in a scorching Desert (all life having been sucked / extracted / strip-mined out of it) and being pummeled by a persistent scorching / fire-y sulfurous rain.  The cold, evokes perhaps an excellent recent Russian dystopic SciFi film (that made the festival rounds here a few years back) Under Electric Clouds (orig. Под электрическими облаками / Pod elektricheskimi oblakami) [2015] [IMDb] [KN.ru]*[KP.ru]*[KT.ru]*) itself more or less obviously influenced by Philip Dick's book [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] on which Ridley Scott's original Blade Runner [1982] [wikip] [IMDb] was based.  (Indeed given the Blade Runner films' thematics of oligarchic capitalism and dystopia, the repeated allusions to contemporary Russia in this film -- perhaps paralleling the allusions to the crowded / chaotic cities of East Asia in the original -- are fascinating in themselves).

Thematically, the film continues to explore the boundary between (Human) Life / Tool.  In the scenario(s) explored in Dick's book and the Blade Runner films, humanity proved capable of creating human-LIKE androids, in the Blade Runner movies called Replicants.  These Replicants, despite even being engineered using DNA were still considered to be SYNTHETIC, created already as adults, hence with no childhood memories except those implanted within them to keep them at peace.  And the purpose of their creation by their human engineers (at a monstrous Corporation named after its founder Tyrell) was to _serve humans_ as basically slaves, usually at "off world" colonies being rapidly constructed because the earth was so clearly devastated / already destroyed. 

Some of these "Replicants" would naturally revolt against their human masters -- the theme of the first film -- demanding both freedom and "more life" (most were being "kept down" in the first film by being artificially programmed to have only a 5 year life span).  In the current film, the Replicants were being controlled no longer by being programed to have an artificially short life span, but by being "genetically programmed" to simply obey / not resist their human masters.

In the current film, the BLIND "visionary" (played by Jared Leto) now heading the Tyrell Corporation, becomes obsessed with the possibility of finding a way for the Replicants to simply reproduce (like humans do) themselves: "They could reproduce far more rapidly than we could ever manufacture them allowing us to colonize ten or a hundred times more off-worlds than we do already"  BUT (1) THAT would make the Replicants EVEN MORE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM HUMANS than ever before, and (2) THERE COME TO BE RUMORS that among the few surviving first generation Replicants (the few who WEREN'T ARTIFICIALLY PROGRAMMED TO DIE AFTER 5 YEARS, or were able to have that programming removed from them) _some_ REPRODUCTION had apparently taken place already.

The rest of the story ensues ...

Yet the film is not merely about the relationship between Humans and DNA-based and yet largely artificially created Human-like androids called Replicants.  There are further (and even more restricted) intelligent, now completely virtual / hologram driven beings called Joi-s, one of which, named Joi (played by Ana de Armas) is _owned_ yet also arguably _loved_ by the principal Replicant in the current story named "K" (played by Ryan Gosling).  She is his principal companion, and he does treat her well, _purchasing for her_ all kinds of fascinating upgrades to _extend her holographic range_ (extend her CAGE...).  But ... at the end of the day she is but a _programmed hologram_ and she is, once more, as he is as well ... PROGRAMMED TO SERVE ... he to serve humans, she to serve her "owner" ... and yes, the VIEWER is invited to be REVOLTED by the fundamental injustice of it all.

It all makes for ONE FASCINATING / THOUGHT PROVOKING FILM !


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Flatliners [2017]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (L)  RogerEbert.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (D+)  Fr. Dennis (2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (N. Murray) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Zoller Seitz) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review


Flatliners [2017] (directed by Neils Arden Oplev, screenplay by Ben Ripley story by Peter Filardy) remake of Flatliners [1990] (directed by Joel Schumacher, screenplay by Peter Filardy) seeks to "update" the original, a film about five medical students who decide to try to explore the phenomenon of  Near Death Experience (NDE),"  They do so by boldly sending each other (one at a time) into the realm of near-death by STOPPING their hearts with a defibrillator, and then, after a period of time, attempting to revive them.  In the remake, the students chronicle their test subjects' / colleagues' near death experiences by means of recording the test subjects' brain activity through a continuous / real time MRI scan.

Okay, the method of investigation seems remarkably plausible if, of course, very, very risky. 

However, the story that follows, especially in the remake, becomes silly and arguably even offensive to many / most religious viewers: 

For instance, one of the medical students, Courtney (played by Ellen Page) who's actually the instigator of the whole experiment comes to be stalked by some demonic apparition of her younger, 10 year old, sister who she _accidentally_ killed some years before. 

I found that whole subplot so difficult to fathom that it turned me off to the rest of the movie.  It just seems inconceivable to me that a 10 year old girl would "come back" to take vengeance on her older sister, when it was so clear that her older sister had killed her _by accident_.  It's a scenario that seems utterly foreign to a Christian / Catholic sensibility. 

But perhaps to a "post-Christian" set of film-makers it somehow becomes possible.

Now while the premise of the film (as the original) is indeed fascinating (who hasn't wondered what it would be like at the moment of death?), the Catholic Church and the whole of the Biblical tradition (1 Samuel 28) has warned repeatedly against any form of "divination" (prediction of the future) and arguably the film is about a perhaps surprising new form of "divination" or otherwise "tempting fate."

As such, the Church would counsel to simply _wait_ to see what comes at death, assuring us that if we do live our lives honestly / well, that "all will turn out okay" and certainly _counsel against_ any and all attempts to "play God."

So, as inherently fascinating as the subject matter of this story may be, the Church would say ... leave it alone.  And honestly, it is clear that the film-makers once presenting the film's premise -- of a group of medical students setting out to study what awaits us in the "near beyond" -- did not know what to do with the story afterwards.

Sigh, disappointing.


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Victoria and Abdul [2017]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

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


Victoria and Abdul [2017] (directed by Stephen Frears, screenplay by Lee Hall based on the book [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Shrabani Basu [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) tells the story of Abdul Karim [wikip] (played in the film wonderfully by Ali Fazal) a 24 year-old Muslim Indian clerk from Agar, India (home of the Taj Mahal) who in 1887 was quite randomly picked ("Ah say Abdul, put down your pencil and come with me.  We have a task for you...") and sent along with a grumpier (and even more randomly selected) middle aged clerk named Mohammed (played by Adeel Akhtar) by their colonial British superior on what would seem to us today to be a nearly farcical mission: to carry a ceremonial coin (yes, no larger or precious than a Susan B. Anthony Dollar) ALL THE WAY FROM INDIA to QUEEN VICTORIA (in ENGLAND) in honor of Queen Victoria's 50th Jubilee.

After a many month journey by ship, they arrive in England, are dressed ridiculous English-ized Indian garb -- to look essentially like "Beefeaters with turbans on their heads" -- and instructed how, during a random State dinner the two were to cross an entire room full of dignitaries WITHOUT MAKING EYE CONTACT WITH ANY OF THEM, and AGAIN, NOT, AH SAY, NOT (!) MAKING ANY EYE CONTACT WHATSOEVER WITH THE QUEEN present Her with said coin and ... QUIETLY ... LEAVE.

Middle-aged Mohammed found the whole exercise humiliating and arguably barbaric.  24-year old Abdul, perhaps because he _was_ still 24, found this task, inevitably ... exciting.  And yes, when he delivered said coin to the aging Queen Victoria [wikip] [IMDb] (played in the film again wonderfully by Judi Dench) he ... could not but help himself and ... made eye contact and ... as only a still 24 year old on perhaps an utterly stupid / meaningless task but still the _task of his young life_ ... SMILED ;-).

And ... with this began "a beautiful friendship."

Now why would a QUEEN fall (platonically, but still fall) for a random 24-year-old nobody from the far-reaches of her Empire?  Well ... GUESS?  State dinners can become REALLY REALLY BORING ... and what a breath of fresh-air it must have been to meet someone, ANYONE, NORMAL ... outside of "Planet Stiff."

I totally get it, and yes, it scandalized "Victoria's Court."

TODAY ... the story arguably _still_ scandalizes _us_ at least in part, because we are confronted with the "possibility" that a 24-year-old Muslim from the South Asia / the Middle East / Pakistan NEED NOT BE "A TERRORIST" ... but rather a quite normal person who smiles, has much to teach us, and who if we put aside our own blinders can actually remind us of ourselves.

Excellent film based on an excellent, well researched book, written by a nice, smiling contemporary Indian author Shrabani Basu [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb] with a journalism background who _herself_ reminds us of what we can learn if we just just open ourselves up to more than just our own "closed little courts."  Great, great job!


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American Made [2017]

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

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (S. Abrams) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review


American Made [2017] (directed by Doub Liman, screenplay by Gary Spinelli) is the third major U.S. film / television production to come-out recently about CIA links to drug-smuggling into the United States during the 1980s, the other two being Kill The Messenger [2014] (a biopic about the late James Webb, the former San Jose Mercury News reporter who first reported on the matter in the mid-1990s, lost his job and ended up committing suicide some years afterwards) and then a "hard-hitting" if perhaps needlessly flashy "Rolling Stone Mag-esque" History Channel sponsored 4-part mini-series America's War on Drugs [2017]

The story is relevant to this day as millions of younger to middle-aged African Americans remain nominally listed as "felons" as a result of a "crack possession" conviction (At the height of the "War on Drugs" in the 1980s-90s "possession" of ANY amount of "crack cocaine" -- whether they actually possessed a rock or two, OR IT WAS PLANTED ON THEM during a "routine police stop" .... -- was made into A FELONY in many states).  This opened the door to many, usually Southern States to "legitimately" takeaway their Civil Rights and make them _ineligible to vote_ FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES unless some Southern governor chooses to do something about this, but then to do so would mean opening the door for his/her opponent to accuse him/her of being "soft on felons..." (not likely to happen ...).

Still, in this era of Russian meddling in our news, there's another aspect of this story to consider: The Russians (successors to the Soviets) LOST the Cold War in the 1980s.  The story: "Well we only 'lost' because the CIA 'bent all the rules' and supported anti-Communist forces in Latin America through drug-running," is well ... "very convenient."  And Readers simply consider that IF the Soviet bloc had won the Cold War, then THE BEST we could hope for today would be someone like Vladimir Putin to be "leading over us."  So all in all, IT'S A GOOD THING that the Soviet Bloc lost the Cold War ...

That said, there's enough "smoke" in this story to assume that there's _a lot of fire_ underneath.  So there is a necessity to "come clean" / "clear the air" before our society can legitimately go on.  Many believe that so many potential African American voters were kept from voting in Florida because of "ex-Felon" voting rights restrictions that BOTH the 2000 and the 2016 elections could have resulted in Democratic Patry victories and our country would _very different_ than it is today.

But this film ISN'T about voting rights.  Instead it is about one rather (in)famous drug-running pilot Barry Seal [wikip] [IMDb] (played in the film quite well by Tom Cruise) who even though he was already doing some petty smuggling while being an airline pilot for TWA -- to its the film's credit, this was shown in its opening minutes if _not_ in entirely honest hues (in reality Seal was smuggling more than just "cigars" while flying for TWA) -- before being recruited by the CIA (in the film by a Monty "Schafer" played by Domhnall Gleeson) to use his flying talents to shoot reconnaissance photos of Communist insurgent camps across Central America.  The pay wasn't that great, BUT ... they gave him a really fast turboprop plane WITH ... "plenty of room" for carrying ... OTHER STUFF.

That "other stuff" BECAME cocaine for the then UPSTART Pablo Escobar Medellin Cartel and later GUNS for the Nicaraguan Contras (and _surprisingly_, for the drug cartels as well ...) going from the U.S. to Central / South America and the Contras themselves (going back up from Central America) to a surprisingly "busy" airport in rural Mena, Arkansas during _interestingly enough_ the time Bill Clinton was governor there ... and George H.W. Bush (Sr.) was first V.P. and then President ...

It makes for "one heck of the story" and from the quite rudimentary "fact checking" that I've done, my sense is that the film makers didn't necessarily let "strict adherence to the facts" _get in the way_ of telling said "good story" ... (Again, it seems that Barry Seal was smuggling "more" than just "cigars" early in his career ...). 

"Good story" or not ... does the film encourage / glamorize crime?  It probably does, but IMHO no more than the various films made over the decades about Prohibition Era mobsters.  Does it encourage cynicism toward government?  Yes it does.  Yet, if the CIA was "looking away" as "freedom fighters" (both North American and Latin American) profiteered from gun and drug running, then ... some of that cynicism would seem to be legitimately earned and the best way to combat such cynicism is to enforce "discipline in the ranks" (expel and jail soldiers / agents who "go off the reservation").

Still in this era of Fake (or at least deeply slanted) "News" a wave of this kind of film, with "our guys" (the CIA) portrayed as "just a bunch of crooks" while such "self-criticism" though available [1] [2]  IF ONE LOOKS REALLY HARD FOR IT on the part of the Russians in Putin's Russia (successors to the Soviets) is rare, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

So while no one will accuse me of not "enjoying a good story" ... the timing of the film at time of a wave of wave of "Fake" / "Tendentious" News stories ... makes me wince a bit.  Still, Tom Cruise certainly played his role well!


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