47 Ronin

1.5 Stars (out of four)

Okay.  In the interest of full disclosure, it has long been my opinion that Keanu Reeves has been the near-fatal element to every movie in which he has starred.  Don't believe me?  Judge by the evidence: Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Matrix (all three), The Day The Earth Stood Still, Speed, The Devil's Advocate, Something's Gotta Give...the list goes on and on.  All potentially great movies that are sabotaged by his dazed expression and dull personality.  Karma must be real because outside of his good looks, there is no conceivable reason why this guy should be in any film where he doesn't play a dazed and dull individual (Parenthood, Bill and Ted's, Point Break).  This guy has hit the sweet spot between the genetic lottery and karmic destiny, because he has been in (and almost ruined) an incredible amount of great flicks.  As a testament to their greatness, they are good despite him (see aforementioned list).  That said, I can honestly say 47 Ronin is neither great with or without him.  It is just...there.

The plot, such as it is, is easily summed up.  Our man Keanu plays Kai, a half-breed raised by demons from childhood in ancient Japan who teach him to fight.  He is adopted by the Asano clan who at first try to kill him.  By being a half-breed and being raised by demons, this essentially makes Kai the red-headed stepchild of the Asano clan.  He is an outcast in Japan's intolerant society and is treated with at the very least, with contempt.  He brings shame to the clan when, during a tournament before the shogun, the Asano clan's champion is bewitched just before he is to fight the warring Kira clan's champion and cannot fight.  Kai puts on the armor and fights instead until the deception is revealed.  Kai is then horrifically beaten.  That same night, the witch working for the Kira clan bewitches the Asano clan's master who attempts to kill Lord Kira while he is a guest.  Kai's master is forced to commit seppuku, ritual suicide, and all the Asano clan's samurai become ronin, disgraced and outcasts.  The rest of the movie is the 47 ronin taking back their master's honor by exacting vengeance on the Kira clan.  At the end, they are also forced to commit seppuku.  The end.

Now, why Universal decided to open a movie in Japan depicting one of their most cherished legends done with an American actor in the lead, with all the actors speaking English, and a story that resembles the original in name only, and expect a hit is beyond me.  That would be like the Japanese making a story about Pearl Harbor depicting the heroism of their pilots against the barbaric Americans and expecting it to be a hit in America.  It was a flop there.  This should have been Universal's first clue to how bad the movie is.  The problem with this movie is that it is not really exciting (I found myself dozing in parts), and that it is a by-the-numbers actioneer with no real inspiration.  Keanu, for once, cannot be held responsible for damaging this film.  It was damaged right out of the gate.  That said, there are some incredible visuals that really do dazzle.  All in all, it is a substandard action flick that you should see only if there is nothing else to see.  And unfortunately for 47 Ronin, there is a lot of good stuff out there right now.

Grudge Match

3.5 Stars (out of four)

So, Grudge Match was a real surprise.  I went in expecting a funny little comedy and came out getting not only that, but a picture with a lot of heart.  Where did that come from?  This was certainly not what I was expecting, and I was pleasantly surprised.  I think when people see Sylvester Stallone doing another boxing movie, they just roll their eyes, even with knowing that it's a comedy.  But I have found that in the last ten years or so, Sly has really upped his game and given us movies we didn't really expect would be any good.  From Rocky Balboa to Rambo to The Expendibles to this, I have been wooed back to his side, redeeming a horrible decade of such fare as Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Tango & Cash, Judge Dredd and Oscar.

Grudge Match starts with a great rivalries in sports, where two great boxers, Henry 'Razor' Sharp (Stallone), and Billy 'Kid' McDonnen (Robert DeNiro) fought two unforgettable boxing matches with each winning one.  On the eve of a third match, Razor suddenly and inexplicably retires.  Since then, Razor has been eking out a living working in a Pittsburg steel mill.  Kid ended up being rich and famous and now owns a car dealership and a bar.  A young, Don King-esque promoter named Dante Slate, Jr. (Kevin Hart, hilariously stealing every scene), comes up to him with a proposition, to do motion-capture for a new boxing video game. Considering Dante's father stole most of Razor's fortune with shady deals and also that Razor and Kid deeply hate each other, he is less than enthused to do it.  However, financial problems force him to take the job with the precondition that Kid will not be there.  Through a scheduling mixup, Kid shows up and a real fight breaks out.  The fight is filmed and posted on the Web where it instantly goes viral, fueling national speculation that a new fight is a possibility.  The fight eventually happens and the grudge match is on.

There is a lot of interesting plots going on with this film that raise it above a lesser comedies about boxing like The Great White Hype.  It has all the boxing conventions: two bitter rivals, the grizzled trainer (Alan Arkin, as funny as ever), the old flame (Kim Basinger), the unctuous promoter, training montages, internal questioning, and the final fight.  As I stated before though, it also has a lot of heart.  Razor must reconcile with a former flame.  The womanizing Kid meets a son, and grandson, he never knew he had and must come to grips about his own selfishness.  Dante is working to get himself out from under his father's conniving shadow to make a name for himself separate from his dad's shady ways.  And finally, it deals with letting the past go, no matter how painful, in order to move on with the future.  Stallone has long been a conservative voice in Hollywood, and it is no surprise he decided to do this film, considering the old-fashioned messages.  But it is a treat to see these two actors who have both played iconic boxing roles, to step into the ring once more.  Even more interesting, they play the same type of characters as their previous movies.  Stallone playing the good, heart of gold Rocky and DeNiro playing the bad, hateful Jake LaMotta.  It is fun to watch and I must say, do not let your preconceptions fool you.  This is a very good movie and worth a watch to anyone.  Also, stick around when the credits begin to roll for a great, final stinger that will make you leave laughing.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

2 Stars (out of four)

So I went into Anchorman 2 with a great deal of trepidation.  Would this be the sublimely funny film that Anchorman not only failed to be, but stubbornly refused to be, or would it be another missed, hack opportunity?  It turns out I should not have worried, because it missed the boat again, despite having a wealth of great material from which to work.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues picks up where Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy left off.  The 70's is behind Ron Burgundy (Will Farrell), God's gift to the evening news and well-coifed hair, and his lovely and sexy wife and co-anchor, Veronica Corningstone (played by Christina Applegate).  They're the hottest evening anchor team until Ron is fired by their boss and is unceremoniously cast into the street after splitting with Veronica.  He then has to scratch out a living drunkenly announcing SeaWorld attractions and sexually harassing the female trainers.  One day, a producer shows up and offers him an opportunity of a lifetime, to be one of the anchors on an all-new, 24-hour news channel.  Ron immediately takes the job and gets his old news team, Champ, Brian and Brick, back together to make the journey back East to New York.  Despite a rough start, Ron unexpectedly becomes the hottest anchor at the channel until an accident leaves him blind, rendering him unable to read the news.  Veronica nurses him back to health and he learns that family life is better than being an anchor.  The end.

Whew!  A lot occurs, but nothing really happens.  Like its predecessor, Anchorman 2 is a huge missed opportunity to make a truly sublime comedic movie.  When, exactly, did comedies become inane 3 Stooges slapstick ripoffs?  When did Hollywood stop making intelligent comedies for adults and decided to go with simple dick and fart jokes that aren't funny to someone over 14?  Anchorman's idiotic excess was most dramatically shown in a 2:03 pan flute sequence that only felt like it was 15 minutes long,  There was so much to work with in the original: the late 70's, sexual attitudes in and out of work, the growing role of women in the workplace, the clothes, disco, hair; oh, I could go on and on.  And to be fair, there are moments that are reminiscent of much better satirical movies like Network and Broadcast News where echoes a great comedy seep through.  Anchorman 2, does try to be better than its precursor.  It speaks to the retardation of real news and it's surrender to news entertainment, race relations, the changing role of the family unit; but it does them all clumsily.  That said, there are some side-splittingly funny sequences that made me laugh out loud.  My favorites are a dinner conversation and a slow-motion car wreck (you'll know it when you see it).  Unfortunately, the car wreck is a metaphor for the whole film.  This movie was so incredibly disappointing; but, when it's funny, boy is it ever funny.

Saving Mr. Banks

3 Stars (out of four)

Saving Mr. Banks originally looked like it would be a fun romp that would be Exhibit A for why one should never involve a writer in the moviemaking process. Writers are nothing but problems as they tend to be emotionally attached to the material.  The trailers promise a fun look at the moviemaking process with a  difficult collaborator.  The trailers also hint at something deeper, but they are a little vague, and this criminally undersells what is a very good film.

The movie is about the making of Mary Poppins.  It tells the story about the difficult relationship that Walt Disney (played by Tom Hanks) had with author P.L. Travers (amazingly portrayed by Emma Thompson.  This is probably one of her best performances to date.)  .  Because of a promise he made to his daughters, he tried for 18 years to get P.L. Travers to sell him the rights to make a movie version of her series of books about our favorite nanny from England.  Because of financial troubles, Travers finally relents and tries to work with Disney's screenwriters and songwriters to make the film.  Disney give her unprecedented control over how her creation would be portrayed onscreen.  She is given final say in both the screen as well as all aspects of production.  She is constantly worried that Disney will turn Mary Poppins into a syrupy musical devoid of any substance.  She constantly criticizes every aspect of the production and generally makes herself as much as a nuisance as possible.  As the movie progresses, we get parallel storylines with what is happening in Hollywood and Travers' life growing up with her alcoholic father.  We find that she wrote the book as an homage to her father, and that despite the series being very whimsical, there is much deeper and personal meanings to her, and this is why she is pushing back so hard.

The reason to see this movie is not really for the story, although it is quite entertaining.  The real reason to see this movie is to see Emma Thompson's performance.  I am going to make another early Oscar call and say that she will get Best Actress for 2013 for this performance.  I have rarely seen such a nuanced performance from anyone.  The reason I gave this 3 stars is that the Travers' motivations are a little vague.  Some of the vagueness may have been a victim of post-production cuts, but it matters little because Thompson gives so much into this performance.  This a good movie for adults, but is not really a family flick.  If you are thinking that it is going to be a backstory on how Mary Poppins came to be, you will be disappointed.  Although that is a very important part of the movie, it is not the most compelling part.  The compelling story is what happened with Travers and her father and how she has internalized the sadness, anger and guilt over the years through her character.

American Hustle

Three stars (out of four)

American Hustle is one of those films you don't want to think about too much, but rather sit back and enjoy.  It is fun, funny and brisk, but does not make a lot of sense.   It's worth it because it is just so much fun to watch.  It reminds me of a lot of the old Rat Pack films like the original Ocean's Eleven, where plot a coherency take a back seat to fun.  That is the attitude you should come into American Hustle.

The film makes no pretensions right from the start.  There have been a lot of "based on a true story" films lately.  Hustle opens with, "Some of these events actually happened."  With that intro, the tone of the film is already set.  This is a comedy, despite some very unpleasant characters and situations, of low level con artists on either side of the law in the late 1970s.  It starts with Christian Bale's character, Irving Rosenfeld, a small-time con man who meets up with Amy Adams' character, Sydney Prossner.  Both had horrible backgrounds and find themselves as two peas in a pod.  Together, they begin a con partnership swindling people for $5 thousand a piece in fraudulent investment schemes.  They are caught by Bradley Cooper's sleazy and ambitious FBI special agent Richie DiMaso.  He forces Irving and Sydney to participate in high-level corruption stings to entrap local politicians.  They reluctantly agree.  While Sydney and Irving honestly love each other, Irving is trapped in a loveless marriage with his passive-aggressive wife Rosalyn, played by at turns wickedly vicious or emotionally naïve by Jennifer Lawrence.  This takes place during the ABSCAM scandals of the 70's, and as the fish get bigger and bigger in the stings, DiMaso keeps pushing Irving and Sydney to bigger and more dangerous situations.  He strongly hints he will never let them out as long they are helping his career.  At a point where Irving is taken by mobsters in a car with a bag over his head, he formulates a con that will get him and Sydney out of the tangled web then find themselves entrapped.  The rest of the film deals with the unravelling of the con, ala The Sting.

The movie is quite good, very entertaining fare.  It is comedy in some of its blackest form at times.  While these are all unlikable characters, the movie's deft script and direction makes you empathize with them despite yourself.  It is obvious the incredibly talented cast is having the time of their lives and it shows with the intensity of each performance.  There is not a dud in the bunch, with Jennifer Lawrence's being a standout.  There are a few problems, though.  First, the movie is a tad overlong.  At times, it takes way too long to get to the point.  Second, the final con is very confusing.  I am unclear as to whether this is because of post production cuts or whether the screenwriters were being a little too clever for their own good.  I suspect it was because of the former.  As the reveal unfolds, some of the moves don't make a lot of sense or just happen because the script says so.  Finally, as great as her performance is, Jennifer Lawrence's part seems padded, almost as if the producers said, "we got last year's Best Actress winner here, let's use her as much as possible."  There are a lot of times her character is not necessary to what we are seeing.  As much fun as it is to see her sink her teeth into a meaty role, there seems to be a lot of unnecessary appearances from her.  But that said, the movie is funny, taut and just a joy to watch.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

3 Stars (out of four)

I need to preface this review with a disclaimer.  I have read The Hobbit and enjoyed it.  However, I read it later in life.  I was introduced to the story when I was 8 living in Spain when I saw the cartoon for the first time.  It caught my imagination and I loved it, but I don't have the emotion attachment that a LOT of people have toward the Lord of the Rings books.  So, for me, I really don't care whether or not the movie follows the book exactly.  There has been a lot of ballyhoo over the additions that Peter Jackson has added to these three new movies.  I do not find it sacrilegious like others.  That said, I liked the new movie.  It has redeemed itself from the first Hobbit film.  The first was long, plodding, and not a lot really happens.  A few have made a very astute observation that the new movies basically look and feel like the old ones.  This one, however, is taut, fun and really zips along.  However, it is a tad long, a bit of a butt buster.

So, The Desolation of Smaug starts exactly where An Unexpected Journey left off.  It throws us right into the action where Azog the Defiler is chasing our company of dwarves and hobbit.  Without giving too much away, we meet the wood elves of Mirkwood (where in a shameless pandering to the female demographic, Legolas shows up again for some reason.  None of this is in the book.) where Thorin tries to enlist the aid of the elves to take back the Lonely Mountain.  The elves refuse and the dwarves go on their way.  Azog continues to chase the dwarves, where they end up in Laketown, near the Lonely Mountain.  After some more talking, the dwarves end up in the Lonely Mountain and Bilbo finally meets the dragon Smaug.  The movie ends up with Smaug leaving the mountain to raze Laketown.  So that's it in a nutshell.

The movie is fun, moves quickly from scene to scene until Laketown.  However, I was in this movie for Smaug.  The two images I had taken from the cartoon when I was eight was Smaug and Gollum.  Gollum doesn't disappoint, but Smaug was a real barnburner.  The scenes with him are great and worth the wait.  I loved every second he was on the screen.  The other aspect I loved about this particular movie was many of the action scenes were filmed from a very unique perspective that upped the excitement quotient for me.  One of the biggest action set pieces in this movie is the dwarves escaping from the orcs under Azog while they are riding barrels in a rapid river.  Most of the action is filmed from the barrels, which, for me, was a lot of fun.  My two complaints about the film are that it is a tad too long.  I was looking at my watch near the end, despite this being a very fast moving film.  The other is the shameless pandering to some audience.  Now, I understand the art of adaptation necessarily means things will be cut or condensed, but when there is outright invention of new characters or plotlines that have no point or purpose, I draw the line.  Liv Tyler's female elf in Lord of the Rings was a necessary addition to make a more coherent storyline.  But the addition of Legolas and the invention of a new female elf with some kind of weird three-way unrequited relationship with Legolas and one of the dwarves for no particular purpose is where I begin to tune out.  Anyway, purists will absolutely hate the film.  Otherwise, it is a lot of fun and I think you should go see it.

The Book Thief

3.5 Stars (out of four)

The Book Thief was one of those movies I wasn't sure about when I first saw the previews.  It looked a lot like many of the other World War 2 movies where brave people protected persecuted Jewish people.  There have been great films like The Hiding Place, The Pianist, the amazing Polish film In Darkness, they all have simultaneous uplifting and depressing commentaries on the nature and perseverance of the human spirit.  So I was wondering what The Book Thief would offer that was different than what we had seen before.  While all of these movies touch on it, The Book Thief hits me where I live.  It focuses on the everyday humanity of people, the little things that pull us together and make unbreakable bonds in family, friends and community, especially in horrible times like wars where there is so much loss.  The tragedy can seem arbitrary and cruel, and that is when our humanity is more important than ever to keep and nurture.

The movie starts with Liesel, in an amazing and scene-stealing performance by 13- year-old Sophie Nélisse, a German girl who, because of her mother's communist leanings, is taken away from her mother and given to a childless German family who want to adopt.  The couple are Hans and Rosa Hubermann (played by Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson).  Hans is a kindly man whom Liesel takes to immediately.  Rosa is a stern, almost comical stereotype of the German house Frau.  At first the movie starts near the very beginning of the war when Germany was just beginning as a nazi state.  As the movie progresses, we then see the gradual and sinister creep of nazi-party ideology and lifestyle over several years and how it took over the lives of ordinary Germans.  We find very early on that Liesel is illiterate, so Hans teaches her to read from a gravedigger manual she stole earlier.  Later, at a nazi book-burning rally, she takes a charred copy of H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man and starts reading that.  She is seen by the town's burgermeister's wife who lost a son in World War I, who takes pity on Liesel.  She lets her read books from her large personal library.  Late one night, a young man near death bangs on the Hubermanns' door.  He is the son of a war buddy who once saved Hans' life.  They take him in and hide him for several years.  Liesel begins to steal/borrow books from the burgermeister's library to read to him as he recovers his health.  As time moves on, we see the soft side of everyone, including Rosa.  As Liesel reads more and talks with their houseguest, it opens inside her a gift for storytelling to describe all the awful things that surround her.  MINOR SPOILER ALERT!!!  The story is narrated by Death, and how the Hubermanns' touched him, hinting at the fate of some or many in the story.  Without giving much more away, Liesel's storytelling becomes a source of inspiration and strength for many.

What is interesting about this film is that its storytelling device is the same as To Kill A Mockingbird, that is, the telling of horrific truths about life through the eyes of a child, in this case, Liesel.  This immediately grabbed my attention and was adroitly used throughout the whole film.  As I said before, this is a story about humanity and people caught up in events bigger than they.  The movie makes the point that not all Germans were nazis, and when they weren't, it had some major consequences in their lives.  Interestingly, the only die-hard Nazi we see with any regularity is the town bully who becomes a willing participant with the Hitler Youth.  But the ongoing theme throughout the film is that not everything is as it seems at first glance.  It also points out that life is quite often not fair and we have to make do with the hand we are dealt.  That is where others come in.  It is by helping one another that lifts us up and ennobles us, especially since we could die at any moment, as Death's narration reminds us.  The movie admonishes us to look out for one another and not be so drawn into ourselves.  It is heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time.  Overall, a fantastic movie.

Dallas Buyers Club

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Okay, mark your calendars.  You heard it here first (or maybe not, but it's the first time you'll here it from me), I have my first early pick for Oscar. Chiwetel Ejiofor from 12 Years A Slave seems to be the media darling this year for Best Actor, but I am going to go out on a limb and predict that it will be Matthew McConaughey's stunning portrayal of Ron Woodruff in Dallas Buyers Club.  It already has reaped a lot of film festival awards for McConaughey and it is easy to see why.  In order to play the homophobic rodeo performer in the advanced stages of AIDS when we meet him, McConaughey famously lost 50 pounds, putting him in great company with other method actors like Robert DeNiro (Raging Bull), Tom Hanks (Cast Away) and Christian Bale (The Fighter AND The Machinist) who dropped or put on the pounds for a role.  It has been a great year of McConaughey performances as he has put out not one, but TWO Oscar-worthy performances, the other being Mud, which I reviewed earlier this year.  But that is not all Dallas Buyers Club offers in the way of amazing performances.  I also think Jared Leto, who showed so much potential as Nic Cage's coked-up, suicidal brother in Lord Of War, should not only be nominated, but win Best Supporting Actor as the transvestite Rayon, who not only gets Woodruff his first customers, but also helps Woodruff find his humanity again by showing that not all gay people fall into convenient stereotypes.  Rather, they are people just as deserving of love and respect as everyone else.  It also features one of the most superfluous performances by Jennifer Gardner, who appears to sleepwalk through the whole film in an utterly forgettable and probably unnecessary role outside of being the caring doctor in the story.

Dallas Buyers Club, as the name suggests, takes place in early 1980s Dallas, just as the so-called "gay flu" began to spread like wildfire.  This was before it was well-known that HIV could be passed through heterosexual contact.  McConaughey plays Ron Woodruff, a hard partying, homophobic rodeo bullrider in the advanced stages of AIDS from unprotected sex with an intravenous drug user.  When diagnosed and given a prognosis of 30 days to live, he predictably reacts angrily at the implication he is gay.  He is then shunned by all his friends and evicted from his house.  He learns there is a new, experimental drug being tested to alleviate the HIV symptoms, and bribes his way to get medication.  What Woodruff doesn't know is the medication is like chemotherapy, in that the medication destroys everything, making him worse than before.  In desperation, he goes to Mexico and finds an exiled, unlicensed doctor who is doing experiments with another drug and a regimen of vitamins and proteins, all of which are legal, but unregulated and unapproved for use by the FDA.  To Woodruff's surprise, he gets better with the drug and hatches a plan to smuggle them into the US and set up a buyers club.  These were membership clubs where people would buy these unlicensed drugs located in several cities throughout the US.  He meets Rayon, a transvestite who wants to be a transsexual, one night in the hospital.  Rayon provides Woodruff his first clients and gradually, the two become friends.  Woodruff is constantly harassed by the medical field as well as regulators and law enforcement.  He finally unsuccessfully sues the FDA for keeping the drug cocktails off the street and eventually dies at the end, several thousand days after his initial 30-day prognosis.

What I loved so much about this movie is its humanity.  It takes characters who would never under any other circumstances be inclined to like or even talk to one another.  Yet, even if the person is repugnant to us, the movie says, if you get past the superficials and get to know the person underneath, the rest seems so silly.  I can't help but be moved by the tenderness and care the people had for each other in the end.  If only the world was more like them.  So why not four stars?  Obviously, this is an issues movie told "based on a true story."  It obviously has a point of view and bias that is a little too transparent.  There is no doubt the conservative backlash in Reagan's America slowed the research on HIV/AIDS.  After all, it only affected gays and drug users, so no one who really matters is hurt, and the sinners were suffering God's judgement on them, the prevailing wisdom seemed to say.  I can't help but wonder if more was done to combat this disease in its early stages, it may not have become the Black Death of the end of the 20th century.  While all this is speculative, the movie falls back on the trite villain of the new millennium, big corporations.  This movie more than hints that it was big drug corporations that kept research at a minimum.  I have to say, this is getting old.  The faceless corporation has replaced our fears of the faceless Red Menace and Yelliw Menace and provided us with a new boogieman watchword.  We now no longer need to prove something with facts, we just refer to our pedantic bad guy, the corporation.  This transference is childish and distressingly ubiquitous in the national debate.  Because of this, the movie dragged in places for me, sacrificing good storytelling whose implications any intelligent adult could understand.  Instead, the movie whines like a child and is ultimately a tad insulting in its dramatic simplification of the problem.  But otherwise, a really good film that is worth a watch.

Catching Fire

3 Stars (out of four)

Okay, so I started this blog after seeing the original Hunger Games, and my position on the story has drastically changed now that I read the three books (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay).  In the interest of fair and unbiased reporting, when I saw the first Hunger Games, I had just started reading the books and was forming a mostly uninformed and negative opinion toward them.  I thought the concept was horrible and bought into the whole outraged hullabaloo.  After reading them, I came to realize the story is a good, albeit somewhat predictable yarn.  The first movie was fine and I thought a fairly good representation of the source material.

Catching Fire takes up just after where The Hunger Games left off.  Our hero, Katniss Everdeen, played by last year's Best Actress Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, is dealing with the guilt of having had to kill several people as the co-winner of the previous Hunger Games, as well as her conflicting emotions between her co-winner Peeta and her true love Gale.  Katniss gets an unexpected visit by the President, Donald Sutherland, exuding menace from every pore, who tells her that she has become a distraction for the oppressed masses with her on-screen romance.  He tells her to keep it up and be convincing.  At the same time, revolt is beginning to brew throughout the Districts, and Katniss has become a symbol of hope for them.  The President is trying to co-opt her as a symbol for the government as she and Peeta take a victory tour through the 12 Districts.  As the tour progresses, they see more and more examples of the government's brutal crackdown.  With each atrocity, more and more signs of open rebellion begin to surface.  The President realizes his strategy is not working, so a new Hunger Games is called.  Every 25 years there is a special twist in the games called the Quarter Quell.  This year being the 75th anniversary, the twist is all the participants will be chosen from previous winners.  Of course, Katniss and Peeta get chosen to represent District 12.  I won't say much more lest I spoil some twists for those of you who haven't read the story.  Needless to say, it's going to be a long year until Mockingjay is released.

So, let's start with the good.  The direction of the film is MUCH improved.  The last director, for some unknown reason, was fond of the hand-held, shaky vomit-com, so popular with subpar directors today who are edgy wannabes.  I was a little worried going in that I would be literally sick from the constant camera motion the last movie had.  Thank goodness we have a much more competent director at the helm.  The production design is fantastic.  The costumes, the pageantry of the capital.  This is a movie that screams Oscars all around for makeup, costuming and cinematography.  A quick note on Stanley Tucci, the emcee and color commentator for the Games.  Like Richard Dawson in The Running Man, he steals every scene he is in with his smarmy, Showbiz artifice.  He is obviously having fun mugging for the camera at every step, and it is a lot of fun to watch.  For an actor who is generally very subtle in his performances, he is a joy to see as the face of the bad guys.  Plus, I marveled at just how white his teeth were, almost like a predator ready to eat whomever he is interviewing.  Jennifer Lawrence has gotten much more confident with her acting.  This movie is all her, and it's success in touching us rests on her shoulders, and she carries it off beautifully.

However, since I didn't give Catching Fire four stars, I obviously don't think it's perfect.  I broke my own rule again and read the books before I saw this movie.  The books are fairly good, but not particularly unique.  They come from a great line of stories that question the role of entertainment and its tranquilizing effect on people, as every dictator knows.  From The Lottery, to Stepheb King's The Long Walk and subsequent movie The Running Man, to the very twisted manga and movie Battle Royale from which The Hunger Games bears the most resemblance, there have been several exposés on this matter.  Unfortunately, even with 2.5 hours, the movie doesn't capture the subtle nuances that happen in the book.  This is an unfortunate casualty to the necessary condensation to movie adaptation.  That said, the movie spends way too much time on the buildup to rebellion, and reveals the plan at the end, almost as an anticlimactic afterthought.  There is a lot going on in this new Game that will have great impact on the next chapter, Mockingjay, and it left that setup a little flat. Motivations are unknown, twists are not revealed.  It could be because they want to show the movie from Katniss' point of view as much as possible, but I don't think so as the script doesn't seem all that clever.  I found it disappointing because this is a very good story.  But in the end, I really liked it and am anxiously awaiting the next film with bated breath.

Street Smart

3 Stars (out of four)

One of the things movies can provide an invaluable service, more than any other medium, is to give us a glimpse into the past.  Movies, like all art, are created by what is around them, and reflect the atmosphere from whence they came.  Because of the interactive "feel" they have, they put us in that world and make it more real than we ever could imagine, transporting us back to our youth or giving those who were not there a taste of what was and now isn't.  Street Smart, starring Christopher Reeve and a very early role for Morgan Freeman that we aren't used to seeing, is a bit like that.  But the funny thing is, Street Smart, for all of its posturing grandiosity, is actually relevant today, more than ever.  More on that later.

In Street Smart, Christopher Reeve takes off the big red S and plays Jonathan Fisher, an ambitious reporter in New York, looking for that big story that will give him his break.  He is in a professional rut, until one day in a fit of desperation, he pitches a story to his editor focusing on a Times Square pimp and his life after Rudolph Guiliani's cleanup of that notorious area.  When he finds that no one will speak to him and deadlines looming, he creates a fictional piece about "Tyrone," a fast-living pimp that becomes an instant hit, making Fisher the toast of the town.  The problem is, a real pimp, Fast Black, thinks it's about him.  Fast Black is on trial for murder, and it becomes evident that everyone thinks Fisher's story is about Fast Black.  When confronted about it, Fisher first stonewalls about the story, but when he finally admits it was a lie, nobody believes him.  Fisher is subpoenaed for his notes on the story and Fast Black sees this as an opportunity to give him an alibi by having Fisher say in those notes that he and Fast Black were somewhere else at the time the crime took place.  Fisher finds himself increasingly caught between having to do real time and professional disgrace on the one hand, and Fast Black killing him and everyone he knows on the other.

This movie is significant for two big reasons, Reeve and Freeman.  Both performances are excellent and both actors give a great turn at their respective roles.  It must be remembered that Reeve made this movie as his career was sliding, a year after the dreadful Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and he was actively trying to regain some of the lost luster from his previous superstardom.  This movie is actually very good, but flopped at the box office, providing a tantalizing look at what could have been a career resuscitation.  But the standout in the film is unquestionably Morgan Freeman.  While he had been acting for some time up to this point, and it was two years before 1989, his breakout year when he was in Lean On Me, Driving Miss Daisy, and his Oscar performance in Glory.  His portrayal as the alternatively charming and then menacing pimp Fast Black got him his first Oscar nod, giving us a taste of what would become one of the greatest careers in Hollywood.

The movie, while showing a rotten Montreal doubling as late 80's New York, is interesting and fun, it still has Hollywood's glamorous unglamorous portrayal of the world of prostitution.  Sometimes this is taken to ridiculous, even insulting extremes with hookers that look like Julia Roberts and Laura SanGiocomo in Pretty Woman.  White suburbia's idea of "the life," an exciting walk on the wild side with a little danger lurking on the fringes.  Just safe enough without getting too close to the world of junkies, whores and blood.  But this movie also allows a little realness to creep in occasionally.  While the hookers are a little too pretty and the lowlifes a tad too glamorous, the movie still has an odd touch of realism in it.  Mostly this is due to the two lead actors' superlative performances.

What is also interesting is that the story still has reverberations today, but not from where you'd think.  Recently, there has been the notorious case of the 60 Minutes story where sloppy journalism regarding George W. Bush's Vietnam record got the producer and Dan Rather fired from CBS.  There have been several cases of reporters in the last few years who have gone to jail for contempt of court for refusing to reveal their sources.  Journalistic rights and ethics have rarely been so attacked and yet so often manipulated.  A free press is the bulwark against tyranny, every dictator knows this and is the reason why many countries don't have a free press.  But in an age where the internet gives any yahoo an audience of potential millions (should I have just said that?), strong ethics in journalism have never been more important.  Movies like Street Smart, Network, Absence of Malice, Broadcast News, Good Night and Good Luck, and even Morning Glory and The Newsroom have never more been important on shining a light to induce discussions about these important issues.

Ender's Game

3.5 Stars (out of four)

I know there have been a bunch of 3.5 star ratings lately, but we have really hit a spate of good movies in the past few weeks.  Let's hope the trend continues.  A few months ago, I had no idea what this movie was about.  I had never read Orson Scott Card's seminal sci-fi novel yet.  However, a friend of mine mentioned around March that this was the film she was most anticipating this year.  When she heard I had not read the book, she chided me and told me I needed to read it immediately.  Now, while I usually make it a rule not to read a book before I see a movie because I am inevitably let down by the adaptation, I'm glad I did in this case.

Ender's Game starts way in the future, 50 years after a race of aliens called the Formics invaded Earth and nearly wiped out humanity in the process.  We were able to turn the tide of the battle with the heroic efforts bt the commander, Mazor arak jam, but just barely.  During the war, we lost tens of millions of people.  Since then, the International Fleet (a sort of global defense force), has been forcibly recruiting the best and brightest of Earth's children to become the next genius commander that will be able to finish the fight by taking it to the Formics home world.  They put these kids through various battle and command schools figuring that since children can process complex information more quickly than adults, this is a way we can breed the perfect commander.  I don't want to tell much more of the story in order not to give too much away, but needless to say, the main character, Ender Wiggen (played surprisingly well by Asa Butterfield) goes through the schools and we follow his training and evolution into a commander.

As I said, I'm glad I first read the book this time.  Normally, I am able to divorce myself from the experience of the book versus the movie because I understand the trade offs you have to make in adapting a 300+ page novel into a 120-minute movie.  You have to condense events, combine characters, etc, to tell a coherent story in a timeframe an audience can be expected to sit through.  But this is highly subjective depending on the audience.  With a hard-core fan base like The Lord Of The Rings, people will endure a butt-busting three or more hours at a clip, but most audiences won't, and thus you have to cut.  The problem is, with a book that is as dense as Ender's Game, where there is a big emphasis on psychology, this is very difficult to coherently portray on screen, especially for the non-initiated.  While this movie is good, it does rely a little too much on you having some familiarity with the source material.  Those who haven't read the book may get a little lost as there is not a lot of explanatory exposition.  But, the movie makes a good attempt, and succeeds for the most part, on exploring the morality of command and warfare.  It attempts to show a battlefield leader must have the right amounts of both ruthlessness and empathy in order to be effective.  It also looks at the morality of war.  Is it ever justified and how far is too far?  Do the ends outweigh the means?  Obviously, the book goes into much greater detail, but all of the important elements are in the movie.

On a final note, if you get a chance, I would recommend the IMAX version.  While it is not necessary to see it this way, there are some really good scenes where the IMAX size makes a difference in the experience of the film.  Overall, the movie is enjoyable and thought-provoking, and even a little fun.

12 Years A Slave

Four stars (out of four)

Every time a movie comes out that deals with America's great sin, slavery, there is a score of reviews of such contrition, it's almost as if they never heard of slavery before.  The unfortunate thing is, this legacy will continue to dog the U.S. until there a reconciliation on both sides, and conversations like this are important to that.  The biggest problem is that there has been relatively few real depictions about slavery outside of documentaries, and this is where movies come in.  Cinema has a way of telling stories that can make things seem more real than any dry recitation of facts could ever do.  The combination of sight, emotion and sound combine to make you experience it in a way not possible before.  You no longer would have to say, "you had to be there," because you already were.  Unfortunately, the moviemaking process introduces subjectivity into the process.  Most movies that depict slavery or either insulting, like Gone With The Wind or Song of the South, or exploitive like Django Unchained.  Even movies that seriously probe the question of slavery like Amstad tend to gloss over the horror of it in favor of happy endings.  12 Years A Slave, for the first time, deals with all aspects of slavery based on a non-fiction story.

The story is the autobiographical account of Solomon Northup, played incredibly by Chiwetel Ejiofor, a freeman living in Saratoga, NY.  An accomplished musician, he gets an offer by two men to go on a two week circus tour through Washington, DC.  While there, they sell him to some kidnappers who send him south into slabery in Louisiana.  Over the next twelve years, he is sold to two different masters.  One, the kindly master, played by Benedict Cummerbatch, and the other, a Simon Legree-type, played by Michael Fassbinder.  Each portray a different aspect of the slaveowner, but both representing that no matter how nice you are, humans are not property or cattle.  Solomon eventually meets an itinerant handyman, Bass (played by Brad Pitt), who writes a letter back to Saratoga where his family and friends eventually get him released.  The sad postscript of the story is that Solomon tried to have the kidnappers and captors prosecuted, they evaded justice.  Also, although Solomon got back to freedom, his was a rare exception.

This movie deals unflinchingly with the evil of slavery and is not easy to watch, nor should it be, for that matter.  There is no romanticism or genteelity of the Old South, merely the ugly truth of what created the foundation of that society.  The interesting point is that the movie does not offer solutions, merely deconstructs all the myths.  Despite what some revisionists say, slaveowners did mistreat their "property," and all are deserving of condemnation, no matter how kindly an owner was.  What I found interesting was not the overt racism and cruelty which is fairly obvious, but the casual cruelty that existed as exhibited through the slaveowners' wives.  They allow the daily horrors by their inaction, but also willingly participate in it by wielding their power by virtue of their position to have slaves whipped or abused.  This is not a film to be enjoyed, but rather endured.  But this should serve as chapter one to truly understand what it is that has to be answered for.

Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)

Film 4 Stars (out of four)

Live score 3 Stars (out of four)

I just saw an interesting performance of FW Murnau's 1922 film classic Nosferatu last night, 25 Oct 2013.  It was a showing of the original silent film with five musicians playing their own original score to accompany it.  They are called the Not So Silent Cinema, and they are a touring group who accompany different silent films that are presumably in the public domain.  For Halloween, they have been doing Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligeri (which, incidentally, I have never seen.  Still want to as being one go the great films of German expressionist cinema in the 20's).  Anyway, for those of you who don't know, Nosferatu was the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's seminal horror novel, Dracula.  The director, FW Murnau, was a genius filmmaker from the German expressionist school of filmmaking that was moving film storytelling in new and exciting directions that previously had not been imagined or attempted.  At this time, the late teens and early twenties of the twentieth century, filmmaking was in its infancy and not considered great art.  The great filmmakers at the time were working in studios in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Spain, not really in America as the large studios were not yet established.  Not much later, many of these European filmmakers would travel to America to greater acclaim, but for now, Europe was the center of filmdom.  

Details remain sketchy, but it appears Murnau never approached the Stoker estate to acquire the rights to film Dracula, simply just rewrote the plot and changed a few names.  Dracula is now Count Orlok, vamp it is now nosferatu, instead of being Romanian and traveling to London, he is now German and traveling to Bremen, etc, etc, etc.  when the Stoker estate, specifically Stoker's widow, found out the movie was made, it successfully sued for copyright infringement and a court ordered all prints destroyed.  However, several pirated copies survived and serve as a true masterpiece of gothic, expressionist cinema.  An ironic postscript to this story is that Dracula has been in the public domain in America since its publishing, due to the fact the Stoker estate never correctly filed for copyright.  Due to the controversy over the legal brouhaha, the movie got great attention and was a success and has spawned several copiers over the years.  But none of them, including the Lugosi-starring 1931 Universal production, have ever achieved such an original, and horrifying, take as the Murnau version.

The movie is truly great, although to modern eyes and sensibilities, it seems quaint, trite and campy.  The necessary overacting of silent film doesn't translate well today in the era of sound.  The challenge is to transport yourself back in time and see it how early twenties audiences saw it.  The moodiness, the use of shadow and dread, the ugly and horrifying images of Orlok, they all set precedents for all the great horror films that would follow.  The movie, for its time, was quite sophisticated.  It told parallel storytelling, which was only in its infancy at the time and had sequential editing, another new innovation at the time.  Unfortunately, most people today look at these images and laugh; the scenery chewing, the iconic images, it all comes off as stale and humorous.  It is precisely because this was the image which all the rest were built on that it seems trite.  It set the actual standard.  If you are interested in seeing cinema as it was being born, this is one of the first great films and should be seen by anyone who wants to see horror or filmmaking in its infancy.

The Not So Silent players were fun, but the score was a tad trite.  The music was also a little 

loud for the size of the room, but it was still quite fun.  This is what is great about silent cinema and gives an opportunity to interpret the story through music, and the exercise is a lot of fun.  If you get a chance to see these guys the next time they are in town, check them out.  They are a lot of fun.

Carrie (2013)

3 Stars (out of four)

Okay, I have to admit, I was surprised by this one.  Kimberly Pierce's take on one of the greatest horror movies ever made, Carrie, by one of the greatest directors ever, Brian DePalma, is no easy task.  It has huge shoes to fill, ones I thought would be impossible to fill.  When it comes to movies, I like being proved wrong and surprised.  I'm not exactly why it took so long to be released.  As you can see from the original poster, it was supposed to come out 7 months ago.  Usually that is a very bad sign when a movie is delayed that long, usually due to post-production tinkering because it wasn't playing well.  Whatever the case, the extra time served it well.  Unlike the horrible and depressingly long line of pale imitators that came before this one, Kimberly Pierce's Carrie, like Rob Zombie's Halloween, is a superlative remake.

The plot is exactly the same.  Carrie White (played by Chlöe Moretz-Hit Girl from Kick Ass), a pitifully shy and timid girl, has her first period in gym class and is mercilessly taunted and bullied by the popular girls in school.  Unfortunately for her, Carrie does not understand what is happening to her because her domineering and fanatical mother (Julianne Moore, playing at her unhinged best) didn't explain the facts of life to her.  What Carrie begins to understand as well is that she is a telekinetic, she can move objects with her mind.  The girls are punished for being so cruel to Carrie, with the leader of the gang, Chris, losing her prom privileges.  One of the gang, Sue Snell, asks her boyfriend to ask Carrie to the prom in contrition to how she treated Carrie earlier.  This does not go over well for Chris or Carrie's mom.  Chris and her boyfriend rig a pail of pig's blood to drop on Carrie after she is elected prom queen.  The cruel trick is perpetrated, and in a fit of rage, Carrie unleashes her telekinesis on the crowd killing many of the attendees.  After the ordeal is over, she goes back home to find her fanatical mother believes Carrie is possessed by the Devil and must kill her.  Carrie kills her mother in self-defense, and in great sorrow, pulls down the house around her and her mother, killing herself in the process.

Normally, in these films, I go off on a screed about what is wrong with them and pontificate that Hollywood is out of touch.  But, this time, I'll start with what's right about it because is is shockingly good.  First, they changed very little of the story.  All the important elements are there (except for DePalma's very famous, or infamous, slow motion opening nude shower scene, but this is a new century.  Just kidding!), from Carrie's traumatic discovery of puberty, to very cruel kids mercilessly taunting her for no particular reason, to her fanatical, abusive mother who offers little solace from the slings and arrows that Carrie endures daily.  Probably the principle reason it is so good is that the original screenwriter, Leonard Cohen, wrote this one, too.  A wise decision by Pierce was taking some of the campiness out of Carrie and have the cast play it straight.  The plot of Carrie is a little out there, so with the superb cast toning it down, it grounds the movie into reality.  This is especially evident in Carrie's mother, a character that is easy to descend into camp because of her fanaticism.  I don't know if it was the feminine sensibilities of Pierce, but her portrayal of Carrie was much more frank and true.  I rematched the original Carrie to compare the two, and I identified more on an emotional level with this new Carrie.  Her feelings and state of mind come through more clearly in this version.  In my opinion, it was easier to identify and empathize with her plight, and it made a sad story even more tragic.  Also, the fact they cast real teenagers in this one instead of early twenty-somethings gives another touch of authenticity.  All in all, the film's tone was much more authentic.  It felt more real.

So why did I only give it three stars instead of four?  Two very big reasons.  Chlöe Moretz is great in this film.  She gives a wonderfully nuanced and believable performance as Carrie.  But the problem is that she is very beautiful and I don't buy her as a mousy and timid girl who would be picked on.  Sissy Spacek, at the time, was willowy and ethereal, and not that pretty in the Hollywood sense as the rest of her co-stars were.  She was heart-breakingly fragile on screen which made you feel more protective of her, and also more shocked at the end in her bloodthirsty rampage where she is an earth-bound Fury.  It is truly a horrifying performance on her part, and utterly believable duality.  Moretz is very good as well, but her beauty undercuts her vulnerability and thus doesn't ring as true.  But that said, she was still great.  Second, the movie wants to have its cake and eat it, too. It wants the blood-soaked, revenge-filled denouement at the end, but she only kills the bad girls.  In the original, Carrie kills everybody at the prom, friend and foe alike, and even this was toned down from the book where she kills the entire town.  I guess in an age that has seen the real-life horrors of Columbine or Sandy Hook, the movie company did not want to portray a massacre of more children then they had to.  While I am not necessarily advocating showing the slaughter of scores of children onscreen, at the same time, it cuts the horror of what we are seeing when we see Carrie selectively sparing the good people and only killing the bad.  She becomes an avenging angel of justice instead of a rage-fueled force-of-nature Fury come to life from who nobody is safe.  In the end, that is what is scary about Carrie, the randomness of her anger.  In the end, the new version felt like a cheat, and the way Hollywood made up for it was to up the gore quotient.  This, ultimately, removes the gasps of horror and only leaves the hoots and cheers of empty thrills.

Machete Kills

2 Stars (out of four)

Machete Kills is...well, what did you expect it would be?  Is it good?  Depends what you mean by good, but, in the strictest sense, not really.  It's a lot of fun.  It's stupid, it's bombastic, it's dumb, its outrageous, it's funny, it's bloody, it's ridiculous, it's racist, it's idiotic, it's full of attitude, and it's an experience to behold.  It's all these things and more.

If you took the plots of Che, Moonraker, and Superfly and threw them in a pot, stirred them up and cooked that stew for hours, Machete Kills would be the result.  It picks up not long after where Machete left off.  Machete (played again at his snarling best by Danny Trejo), is busting up some bad guy ring or another with his girlfriend (Jessica Alba), the ICE agent who taught him there's more things important than the law, and that's justice.  They are breaking up a weapons smuggling ring by the US Army to some bad guy or another.  More bad guys show up, a gunfight ensues and Alba is shot dead by a mysterious masked man.  Then other guys show up and kill the bad guys and take Machete prisoner.  Turns out they work for the President (played by newcomer Carlos Estevez-or really Charlie Sheen-for those of you who don't know, this is Charlie Sheen's real name).  He says there is a killer in Mexico that has a missile of some sort that can destroy Washington. He sends him on a mission to kill this man.  On the way, Machete is being pursued by a viscous bounty hunter, El Chameleón (played by Walton Goggins, Cuba Gooding Jr, Lady Gaga, and Antonio Banderes-don't ask).  Then Machete goes to Mexico and.,,I sort of lost track of the plot by this point, but it doesn't really matter.  None of it really does, you just move from one scene to the next and go with it.

I don't really know why, but the writer and director Robert Rodriguez seems intent on being the Steven Spielberg of Ed Wood movies.  He is an auteur of sorts, writing and directing most of his movies as well as editing them, scoring them and acts as his own DP at times.  He has directed El Mariachi, Desperado, Once Upon A Time In Mexico, From Dusk Til Dawn, Sin City, Planet Terror, Machete, and now Machete Kills.  With the possible exception of the first, every single one of them are bad, pulpy mounds of crap.  But the sad fact is, Rodriguez is a director of no small talent and capability and makes exciting films.  There are several working directors today who don't have anywhere near his considerable abilities and yet Rodriguez continues to make such drivel.  His films are kinetic, exciting, and he works with some of the best talent Hollywood has to offer.  Just consider some of the names he has worked with in the past:  Bruce Willis, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp, Jessica Alba, George Clooney, Maria Vergara, Harvey Keitel, Michelle Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Eva Mendez, Clive Owen, Fergie, Willem Dafoe, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Cheech Marin, Mickey Rourke. The films are fun, yes, but I see so much more in him.  He could be great, make something great.  It is almost as if he is determined to make the the best made but dumbest movies ever to be projected on the silver screen.  I don't know if he is pulling a fast one or not, but he has yet to make something good.  I have loved most of the films he has made, but I long for a good one.  Maybe A Dame To Kill For, the sequel to Sin City, will be better.  We will have to wait and see.  Until then, we may have to comfort ourselves in the upcoming Machete Kills In Space (don't ask on that one either.)

Rush

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Ron Howard does it again.  While they can't all be hits, the only other two guys in Hollywood that consistently deliver like him are John Lassiter and Steven Spielberg.  Rush is exciting, compelling, and a lot of fun.

Rush is the story of the rivalry between two Formula One drivers, Englishman James Hunt, played by Chris Hemsworth, and Niki Lauda, played by Daniel Brühl.  It takes place during the 1976 Grand Prix season.  These two men were bitter rivals up to this point, but the 1976 season brought it to a head.  Hunt, a devil-may-care thrill seeker and all around mimbo, is dangerously inconsistent, not too smart, but great driver. Lauda, an Austrian, is his polar opposite, intelligent, methodical and careful and not very amiable.  Together their rivalry electrified the world in the 1976 Grand Prix, which culminated in a horrific crash halfway though that almost killed Lauda.  Yet he pulled through and was able to make the last race.

Now, if you are doing a movie about Formula One racing, you have to show races, and boy, are there a lot.  Howard knows how to choreograph great action scenes, and the racing is phenomenal.  But the heart of all Ron Howard pictures are interesting people, and this movie is no exception.  The problem is that the characters are not particularly likable, and this is why I took off half a star.  Hunt, while his bacchanalian lifestyle is the envy of most men (racing fast cars, partying like there is no tomorrow, and does not meet a woman who will not go to bed with him in a moment), is incapable of caring about anyone other than himself.  He is just not a very good person.  He may be fun, but in the end, not a reliable friend at all.  Lauda, on the other hand, is cold, precise and has the intensity of a laser to the exclusion of all else.  He is supremely confident past the point of arrogance in his ability (and rightly so, he was the Grand Prix champion for four years), and really does not care what others think of him.  He does not care who he slights or what feelings he hurts.  Yet these men form a rivalry, and a friendship of sorts, based on mutual respect, both of whom respect very little.  What is interesting is that Lauda, during his honeymoon, says that happiness is an enemy because you then have something to lose.  But after his crash, he grows as a person realizing he does have something to live for in the end.  This is the movie's key redeeming feature and makes it a cut above the rest.  In the end, we must see growth, some change, a character arc.  We get this with Lauda's story, and it makes for a satisfying movie experience.  While these men are not exactly role models to emulate, we can learn from them, and that is what great entertainment does.

Prisoners

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Prisoners is a disturbing film that raises disturbing questions.  It is almost a throwback to the 1970's, a time when events seemed to be spiraling out of our control and our movies reflected a reflexive anger against the powerlessness that we felt. We saw it with such films as Dirty Harry, Death Wish, Taxi Driver, The Warriors, and Straw Dogs.  All of these movies are meditations, in their own way, reactions to the increasingly hostile society and our feeling of no protection from it, where the rights of criminals and anarchy reigned over the rights of the victim and law and order.  People saw an increasingly impotent police hamstrung by laws and lawyers who they felt they had no concern for the safety and well-being of society.  These movies posited the only thing one could do was lash back at that decay despite the law.  The punks versus the non-punks locked in a steel cage match with each other because the law and police would not protect us.  Whether or not this is an accurate assessment I won't get into here, because this isn't a political blog like Bill O'Reilly or Ariana Huffington.  But art should, and often does, reflect feelings and frustrations of the public, especially art driven for mass consumption.  And is it any wonder that in a day and society that can produce real-life horrors like Columbine, Sandy Hook or even the Batman theater shootings, that we should see echoes of that horror and disbelief in popular entertainment?  From TV shows as diverse as American Horror Story and Sons of Anarchy, to movies like Hostel, Saw and White Elephant, psychos are in and here to stay.  The question is, what does one do about it?  Prisoners reflects that anxiety.

Prisoners starts out where two very close families are having Thanksgiving together.  When the two youngest daughters are abducted when they go out to play, the two families are obviously thrown into a panic.  After a brief search, a probable suspect is found who is slightly developmentally challenged.   He briefly tries to run from the police in an RV, but crashes into a tree.  A lot of circumstantial evidence points to him as the culprit.  He is thoroughly questioned by the police and his RV is searched, but because he won't talk and there is no evidence to hold him in custody, he has to be released.  When he is released, one of the girls' fathers, Keller Dover, played intensely by Hugh Jackman, is convinced the man did it and kidnaps him.  With the reluctant help from the other father, Fraklin Birch, played by Terrence Howard, they torture this man ruthlessly to get him to talk.  He does not crack, but says cryptic things that may or may not have some meaning to the girls' whereabouts.  As the movie continues, and the police search progresses, the torture gets more intense.  As they torture him, it seems the man Keller and Franklin took may  be innocent.  Or maybe not.

What is interesting in this film is the question, just how far are you willing to go when you are not totally convinced you're right, but you just might be?  Each character who participates in the torture goes to their preconceived limit of acceptability, all of which are different, but they don't stop it.  Keller is obsessed and totally convinced, but doesn't want to do what he is doing.  Franklin has moral qualms about it, but he does not have the fortitude to stand up to Keller to get him to stop.  The crucial point is that Franklin is not weak, but does have serious reservations to what is happening.  The really interesting point happens when Franklin tells his wife Nancy, played by Viola Davis, about it, and after a brief outburst from the man they're holding, she goes along with it as long as Keller will not kill the man.  All layers of gray, but all asking the same question, do you trade your morality and soul for an outcome you desperately want resolved but you may not be 100% it will work.  This is obviously been a question facing our society since the allegations of torture came out of Iraq and elsewhere.  This same question was posed in the film Zero Dark Thirty, with a similar ambiguity by the filmmaker, where they leave the answer up to you, the viewer.  Neither film really takes sides, just posits the question and lets you decide for yourself.

The movie is superlative, but not perfect.  There are two reasons I deducted a half star, but neither have to do with performance.  They both have to do with the story.  The first is that it wraps up a little too neatly and ends abruptly, but is satisfying.  This is intended for mass audiences, after all, so there can't be too much to chew on at the end.  We like our stories to end, and being Americans, end fairly well.  The second is that there is a crucial bit of evidence found that really is too neat and found for no logical reason other than they needed something to set up a boogeyman at the end.  It just abruptly appears in the middle.  There is no reason the detective, played bombastically by Jake Gyllenhaal, to find it, but we needed it so we could tie all things neatly at the end.  It reminds me a little of how they caught on to John Doe in Se7en by tracking his library card.  It stretches reality a little too much and is in there because the script painted itself into a corner.  But otherwise, the movie is taut and suspenseful, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Gravity

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Gravity was not what I expected.  I had heard that it wasn't very good from a person who had seen it. I thought it was going to be like the 2003 film Open Water, a film where a shipwrecked couple ends up in shark-infested waters.  It gets more and more intense until SPOILER ALERT!!! they end up getting eaten at the end.  With the Gravity previews, the film had a similar feel.  But, to my surprise, it was something I did not expect.

Gravity starts with Dr. Ryan Stone, Sandra Bullock's character who is assigned to a space shuttle mission testing a new sensor foe the Hubble telescope.  During an EVA mission, the Russians destroyed one of their satellites which causes a storm of space debris that destroys the shuttle and sends Ryan hurtling off into space.  George Clooney's character, Matt Kowalsky, manages to save her and gets her back to the destroyed shuttle.  They decide to go to the International Space Station to use the Soyuz capsule to get back to Earth.  Bad situation follows bad situation.  Will she get back?  Will she die?  You have to see it.

I don't want to give away the ending, but I do have to give away some details.  Ryan ends up on her own fairly quickly.  So, like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, this is really an acting exercise.  Sandra must carry this film on her own, and she does it incredibly well.  But a good acting performance isn't enough.  The movie has to be compelling, it has to be entertaining, and this movie has both in spades.  It is equally exciting during the space scenes and emotional when events slow down.  The action scenes are incredible. They do, however, remind me a little of Armageddon, as thing after thing keeps going wrong, bouncing from worse to worse situation.  But the best, and most important part is, it is incredibly life-affirming.   Alfonse Cuáron is known for creating scenes of great majesty and beauty, and this film is no exception.  The only criticism I have with the film is that there really isn't a lot to it, the same as Cast Away.  There is only so much you can or can't do with only one character, so there tends to be a lot of wasted time on vistas rather than a story.  However, I would recommend that if anyone see it, see it in IMAX.  Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, it will lose a lot on a smaller screen.  Other than that, it is very tight, very watchable and worth the time.

Captain Phillips

3.5 Stars (out of four)

Captain Phillips is the first shot across the bow for this Oscar season.  It is truly a good film, and approaches great.  I am hoping we will be gretting some more shows like this during this season.  I was beginning to think that intelligence was dead in American cinema, but most times, the Christmas Oscar season restores my faith that Hollywood is still vital when it wants to be.  It may be gasping for breath, but quality still exists.

Captain Phillips' story is known to most people who have any inkling of recent events.  Phillips, ably played by Tom Hanks, was a captain of an American merchant container ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2010 while it was transiting around the Horn of Africa.  After a brief standoff on the ship, he convinces the pirates off the ship, but they take him hostage in a lifeboat.  By this time, the US Navy caught up with them and he was rescued by a team of Navy Seal sharpshooters on the open seas.  The real events were a dramatic demonstration to most Americans of how bad the situation is around Somalia since it caught the news cycle as Phillips is an American. The film is a dramatic retelling of the events.

The crucial element about Captain Phillips that makes it so good is not only does it make the events nail-bitingly compelling, but it gives a human face to the pirates.  It does not make the pirates look like good guys, but it shows what a bad situation from which these men come.  They are not evil, merely incredibly desperate.  It makes the point that most of the pirates are not criminal masterminds; they are mostly unemployed fishermen who don't know how to do anything else.  They are also not particularly smart and are also not the recipients of the ransoms they demand.  They simply are pawns for gang lords who take the money from them.  The movie is not trying to make you feel sorry for them, rather trying to let you know how complicated the situation in Somalia is.  The main Somali pirate, Muse, seems out of his depth most of the time.  From trying to prove himself to his elders and tribe, to securing the ship, to keeping a particularly psychotic member of his crew calm, to dealing with the arrival of the Navy, to finally being sentenced to prison, he always seems to just be barely keeping his head above water.  He walks around bewildered, not prepared for how fluid the situation gets, and shows he is not particularly adaptable.  What he naïvely thinks should be simple! a snatch-and-grab with an easy payoff, rapidly spins out of his ability to control.  His situation is almost pitiful.  He is just not meant for this type of work.  In the end, it is just sad more than anything.

Tom Hanks is as brilliant as ever.  But what I liked about this film was that it, however briefly, dealt with the aftermath of the kidnapping, rather than ending immediately after the rescue.  You see that, because of the stress and worry, after Phillips was rescued, he breaks down sobbing and is almost incoherent.  This is something we do not usually see in these types of stories, yet is a very real outcome in hostage situations.  The only reason this movie does not get four stars is because the director keeps using the vomit-cam (the bouncing, hand-held camera style so popular these days).  Now, I realize the movie is shot on the high seas and that they are never still, but Jaws was also shot on the ocean, and there was not the bouncing as in this one.  I know filmmakers think it gives the film a touch of realism or edginess, but to me it just looks sloppy, and literally makes me sick.  Since I don't want to be nauseous when I watch a film, I really wish people would stop using this technique except sparingly.  The movie otherwise is great and worth the time.

Honeymoon In Vegas

1 Star (out of four)

First off, I must apologize to Hollywood for an earlier statement.  I said when did Hollywood just assume our IQs just dropped precipitously?  Rhenish I first wrote that, I thought it was recently, but it wasn't recently.  Turns out they have always believed we were incredibly stupid if they thought this stinkburger was comedy.  Google's dictionary defines the word comedy thusly,

"professional entertainment consisting of jokes and satirical sketches, intended to make an audience laugh."

Honeymoon In Vegas meets only one of these criteria.  It is professional (sort of).  It is not entertaining, there are no jokes that I could see except for a good one at the end (which is why this gets one star instead of being a bomb), it does have satirical situations, I guess.  But the key is the second part, "intended to make the audience laugh."  On this, it fails miserably.

Honeymoon In Vegas starts off innocently enough.  A man, played by Nicholas Cage, makes a promise to his domineering mother on her deathbed he will never marry, resulting in severe commitment issues.  He meets a wonderful girl (the pretty but oh so tragically horse-faced Sarah Jessica Parker) and they date for years.  Finally he relents and takes her to Las Vegas to get married.  While there, mobster James Caan sees them and instantly falls in love with her.  He cons Cage's character in a card game.  In order for Cage to settle the debt, the mobster asks to have Parker's character for the weekend, where Caan then tries to convince her to marry him.  Cage then bounces between Nevada and Hawaii and back to Nevada in a desperate attempt to get her back.

God, where do I start?  First, at the weekend in Vegas, there is an Elvis impersonator convention going on, so the soundtrack is all Elvis music and there are Elvi everywhere.  While this is mildly amusing (and a little surreal), it gets old real fast. You see thin Elvi, fat Elvi, old Elvi, young Elvi, short Elvis, REALLT tall Elvis, black Elvis, Indian (turban and all) Elvi, a kid Elvis, Elvis, Elvis, Elvis.  I like Elvis as much as the next person, but it is possible to get too much of a good thing.  I thought the Elvis thing was done to much better effect in the quirky (and surprisingly violent) 3000 Miles To Graceland with Kevin Costner and Kurt Russel.  The one actually funny joke is that to get back to Vegas from Hawaii, Cage hitches a ride with The Flying Elvises, a skydiving team.  Their cavalier attitude towards what they do and how they dress is pretty funny, but this cannot make up for 80 minutes of not-funny that precedes this joke.

Next, it is not the actors' fault they have to read such crap.  It is their fault for agreeing to be in such a stupid movie.  Nick Cage's performance is great, James Caan plays Sonny Corleone again.  But the sad waste is Sarah Jessica Parker.  She can do comedy (as we amply saw later in Sex And The City).  While she was the weakest link in that show, she is funny and there is a certain something about her.  But she and her talents are absolutely wasted in the dumb blonde role of this movie.  Granted, she is angry to be passed off as a prize in a bet (And I take it back.  There are two good jokes in the movie.  When she realizes and then loudly proclaims that Cage has made her a whore in the middle of a crowded room, the reactions of everyone is very funny), but are we honestly expected to believe that she would go from ready to marry a fiancé whom she has dated for 2+ years to move on and marry a much older man after four days in Hawaii?  I realize comedy expects us to suspend disbelief to swallow the absurdity of whatever situation we're watching, but this stretches the bounds of reality way too much.

I could go on and on tearing apart this big steaming mass, but suffice to say it is dumb, dumb, dumb, and pretty insulting as well, to women in particular.  I guess I am so vehement in this review because I have heard for years how funny film this was supposed to be.  Maybe it is a casualty of shifting comedic tastes through the years, but it sucks, and I feel betrayed.  It all comes back to story.  If you have a good script, the rest will follow.  If you have a bad one, well, you can keep a dung beetle as a pet, but you still have two problems.  It's a bug and it eats crap, which is exactly what the producers of this film make us do by watching it.