I don’t remember who came up with the idea of two-sentence
movie summaries that are both accurate and sardonic. Here is my take on this
concept.
The Last Samurai: An American soldier decides Japan
is more spiritual than America. So he joins a rebellion against the emperor.
The Wizard of Oz: Trying to get home from Oz, Dorothy
almost dies on a mission to steal a witch’s broom. Then she finds out she only
had to click her heels.
Aliens: A platoon of Colonial Marines gets wiped out
fighting the monstrous aliens. Ripley emerges triumphant by using a forklift.
Saving Private Ryan: A small group of soldiers goes
behind enemy lines in World War II to retrieve Ryan, whose brothers have all
been killed in the war. He decides not to go with them.
Titanic: A couple falls in love on the RMS Titanic.
The ship sinks.
Pride and Prejudice (1995): Lizzy must decide who is
truly guilty of pride and prejudice as she contemplates the seemingly
hardhearted Mr. Darcy. When she sees him wet after a swim, she takes off.
Shane: The gunslinger Shane hangs up his guns to live
a peaceful life with a family, including a little boy. He shoots a couple men
to death in front of the boy.
The Lord of the Rings: Frodo must destroy the great
ring of power to save Middle Earth. He claims the ring for himself, but his
finger is bitten off, so happy ending.
Romeo and Juliet (1968): Although their families are
literally feuding with each other, Romeo and Juliet decide to marry for love.
They both die.
Freud’s Last Session.
Directed by Matt Brown. Written by Matt Brown and Mark St. Germain. Starring
Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Goode, Jodi Balfour. Rated PG-13 for language, sexual
material, bloody/violent flashbacks, smoking. Runtime 2 hr. 2 min.
Freud’s Last Session is a
fictional account: What if C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud met each other on the
eve of World War II? This would be just weeks before Freud’s death, and after
he was awarded the prestigious Goethe Prize for intellectual achievement. And
this was before Lewis’ radio lectures on Christianity during the war, which
became the basis for his famed apologetic work Mere Christianity.
Those who are looking for a
shootout between the atheist and the Christian will be disappointed. Freud
(Anthony Hopkins) does most of the talking. Lewis (Matthew Goode) mostly
listens. And thereby hangs an interpretation of the title.
Freud unloads on Lewis tirades not
just against Christianity, but often on his personal life. He strides around,
gesturing with his arms, dogmatic and arrogant. Lewis listens cooly, sometimes
sharing about his personal life when relevant, and giving mild rejoinders. In
the third act, Freud occupies the famous couch in his office, while Lewis sits
at the desk. Yes, this is Freud’s last session, with Freud as the patient.
The movie is disjointed, with a
rejoinder from either man sometimes much later than the question, and with
vivid flashbacks interrupting seemingly at random. So the following is a
stitching together of scenes that may not have been shown consecutively.
Lewis shares that after his mother
died, his father did not know how to deal with Lewis and his brother, so he
sent them off to boarding school. Freud concludes that the distant father led
Lewis to his superstitious longing for God. Lewis responds that actually, he
reconciled with his father. He then points out that Freud hates his father, so
perhaps that is why he rejects God. Freud dismisses that with a wave of his
hand.
Towards the start of the movie,
Freud criticizes Lewis for being late, seeing that as a flaw. However, Lewis
was late because of trains shipping children away from London to the safety of
the countryside. The compassion shows plainly on Lewis’ face as he sees the
children, and later when they both hear on the radio that twenty thousand are
dead in Poland. Freud shows no such reaction. But Freud is concerned about
those close to him—a daughter and grandson who died. He shows Lewis a
photograph of them. Freud asks about their deaths and his own pain and
suffering. Why does God allow it? And frankly, that is the question that most
non-intellectuals feel is most important about God.
At first Lewis says, “I don’t know,”
and Freud thinks he has a victory. But then it becomes apparent that Lewis was
talking about the particular suffering his family has gone through. Lewis goes
on to say that if pleasure is God’s whisper, then pain is God’s megaphone.
Freud constantly says Christianity
is just superstition, an "insidious lie," and at the start he says he is surprised an intelligent
man like Lewis believes in it. Later, we briefly see a flashback to Lewis’
writing group the Inklings, and we are shown an achingly short glimpse of a
page of Tolkien’s work. Tolkien witnesses to the then-atheist Lewis, saying the
Gospel is different from the world’s mythologies. He challenges Lewis to study
this. We then see Lewis doing so, going back to the original Greek of the New
Testament.
Fans of both Freud and Lewis will
be disappointed at some truncated versions of their arguments. Lewis says that
all the religions that Freud denounces teach about doing what is right and not doing
what is wrong. It leaves out Lewis’ argument that one can only know what is
wrong from a sense of right, can only know what is bent from knowing what is
straight, and that knowledge is what God puts in everyone. Freud gives a brief
mention of his belief in the stages of sexual development, but it is so garbled
by his oral cancer, it is hard to understand.
Freud is portrayed as getting the
better of Lewis over fear of death. During an air raid alarm that turns out to
be false, they go to a church basement for shelter. Freud not only shows no
gratitude, he is rude to the clergyman. But Lewis has a bad moment, which he
says was a flashback to The Great War. Freud needles him about that moment,
saying he showed no joy about meeting his God, and therefore Lewis had a lack
of faith. Lewis looks stunned for seconds, and he has no reply. Later, on the
train home, Lewis looks afraid again at distant lights that either remind him
of war or show the preparations for war.
Overall, Freud’s Last Session
has an unsavory air. Freud’s daughter Anna, considered the founder of child
psychoanalysis, is accused by more than one person of having attachment
disorder towards her father. This is shown in a series of flashbacks that turn
out to be beyond creepy. And the movie implies she had a lesbian relationship (which is shown briefly in a hallucination),
for which there is no evidence and which Anna always denied.
A lengthy flashback show the pact
between Lewis and a friend during The Great War, which Lewis did write about.
They both had single parents. If the friend were killed, Lewis was to take care
of his mother for the rest of her life, and if Lewis were killed, the friend
would take care of Lewis’ father for the rest of his life. The friend is
killed. In the most horrific scene of the flashback, hunks of shrapnel are
pulled out of Lewis’s leg without anesthetic. But when one puts together a few
scenes in the movie, it clearly portrays Lewis as having a sexual relationship
with his friend’s mother. There is no evidence for this.
So because of these and other
scenes, I cannot recommend Freud’s Last Session. Is this a biased
review? Perhaps. But were we all meant to interpret the movie the same way?
Unlikely.
Through the
Storm.John Ringo and Lydia Sherrer
(Baen Books 9781982192990, $28.00, hc. 352pp) November 2023. Cover by Kurt
Miller.
John Ringo is the author of a number of military science fiction series,
including the Black Tide Rising zombie series. Lydia Sherrer is the
author of the Lily Singer cozy fantasy series. Together, they wrote an
augmented reality story where the characters fight monsters while experiencing
teenage angst.
Lynn Raven is the best player in TransDimensional Hunter, a game watched
by billions throughout the world. Since it is augmented reality, not virtual,
she can run into a tree if she’s not careful. She and her four fellow students
on her team use their goggles to see monstrous snakes, spiders, flying tengu,
and other grotesque creatures coming at them. They use guns as their ranged
weapons, but also enjoy using their swords to dispatch the monsters into
showers of sparks.
Although Lynn spends hours at a time in augmented slaughter, the teenage
angst spurs some of the crucial plot points. Lynn’s nemesis at school is a rich
girl who calls her a “fat cow.” Lynn’s best friend in middle school went over
to the rich girl’s side, just because. But Lynn’s biggest external enemy are
the paparazzi, which use unregistered aerial drones. They follow her around,
recording whatever she says and does. She suffers immense anxiety over them, as
any teenager would. But her low self-image due to body issues magnifies it all.
If they continue to harass her, her gaming skills will suffer.
But more angst comes Lynn’s way when her former best friend, Kayla,
suddenly says she wants to be friends again. Kayla realized she has
not been able to live her own life, just obeying the rich girl and dressing the
way she is told. She misses Lynn. Obviously, Lynn has trust issues. And Kayla’s
stepdad owns a PR firm. If Lynn will sign with them, Lynn can livestream camera
feeds from her battles, and do interviews. The paparazzi drones will go away. Lynn
has to figure out if this possible solution is worth trusting Kayla. These
bullying and trust issues deepen these characters into real teenagers.
When it becomes obvious Lynn’s team needs a new captain, Lynn accepts a
guy from the rich girl’s team. Lynn cannot fully trust him, but they both have
the goal of becoming the champion team at the finals. Readers can immediately
see he’s a skeezy guy. He takes advantage of Lynn’s innocence and her
insecurity over her body, tells her how beautiful she is, kisses her, and tries
to go too far. We may be disappointed by Lynn’s naivete, but for all her
ability to kill monsters, she is a shy teenager. Fortunately, she knows how to
use her knee where it counts.
Then in the setup for the climactic scene, Lynn invites teams from around
the world to help her take down a “boss” in the game. She has to get past her
anxieties to address a hundred gamers. But she uses her motto of “Fake it till
you make it.” Only by fighting through this last struggle of teenage angst can
she lay out her battle plan and hector the teams into obeying during the
battle.
Overall, Through the Storm does not have young people doing their
own thing with no adult input. Lynn’s mother is very supportive of her. But
when Lynn gets an F on an English assignment, that makes for a serious talk. Also,
when the skeezy captain insists on calling the team members by their last
names, we can figure out their ethnicities. This is s a simple approach that
does not apply virtue signaling to the novel’s diversity.
The story also has more sophisticated content than slashing monsters and
teen angst. As a public figure, even private conversations Lynn has can be
distorted into public statements. Lynn is not political, but she is cautioned
against saying anything controversial to a friend, because that could be
recorded by a paparazzi to make money by publicizing her “statement.”
This novel is a sequel to Into the Real, in which Lynn’s online
persona was Larry, an older male military veteran. Although Lynn references her
Larry persona, this novel stands well on its own. Somewhat jarring are a few
scenes that let us know that TransDimensional Hunter is more real than Lynn
knows. Chapter 1 is that sort of scene, so it is best to skip it until
finishing the story. But Through the Storm is great both for those who
want gamer scenes and to see a teenager work through her issues. So yes, this
is a YA novel, despite the cover. Although, there was one girl in my high
school who looked like that.
I live in the Seattle area, and I was surprised that most of
the people I told that there would be an eclipse today didn’t know about it. I
used my NASA-approved dark plastic lenses to watch. It started out looking like
a chunk had been taken out of the sun. At the maximum, 95% of the sun was
covered. I definitely felt the wind pick up, since the decrease of heat in our area
of the atmosphere caused unequal air pressures.
I tried a few times to get a picture, but my phone would just
show a bright blur of light—that’s how bright the sun is, even during a partial
eclipse. I finally got a picture. But it looked impossible. The eclipse was
reversed! How could that happen?
I first thought the phone had somehow picked up a reflection
of the dark lenses I was using. But the camera was aimed away from me, at the
sun.
I finally realized it was some internal reflection inside
the camera, caused by the brightness of the sun. The blur in the upper right is
the real eclipse. The image in the lower left is the internal reflection.
But that was my fun in the partially-eclipsed sun.
Winds of Marque Bennett R.
Coles (HarperCollins Publishers 9780062820358, $16.99 pb. 368 pp) April 2019.
Bennett R. Coles
is known for his brutally realistic military science fiction. In his Virtues
of War trilogy and a short story in the same universe in the Infinite
Stars anthology, he describes not only hurtling through atmospheric entry
and small group tactics, but also needless intragroup conflict and questionable
civilian casualties.
In Winds of
Marque Cole throws all that aside and just has fun. The ship use sails
whose masts are often in danger of breaking. They use the solar winds to
travel—faster than the speed of light? The main weapons are cannons that use
gunpowder in the vacuum of space. How does the physics of all this work? It
doesn’t. This is a fantasy world in space.
Subcommander Liam
Blackwood is a fearless officer. One might even say he is dashing. He accepts a
commission from the Lords of his empire to be the executive officer on a ship
sent without any support to a distant sector of space. Their mission is to
clear out the pirates who are cutting off supply lines. If they fail, they will be
denounced as mad rogues. But if they succeed, they will be granted prize money
from the cargo they seize from the pirates—enough to make each crew member
rich. He is aided by the hyper-efficient Quartermaster Amelia Virtue. She
happens to fall into his arms when a ship is shaken in an early adventure. We
definitely see where this is going.
Their society is
highly structured. Pampered royals often wreak havoc when in command of ships in
the Imperial Navy. Fortunately Blackwood and Virtue have a competent captain for
their pirate raids, though she is enigmatic and never explains her perplexing
orders to Blackwood. That is her prerogative, but eventually the crew loses
confidence in her. They’re also saddled with a spoiled brat of a royal cadet,
whose sheer obstinacy almost ruins the mission.
The battles are
savage when they board pirate ships. Many of the crew on both sides get cut
down by swordplay. (Blackwood has the only pistol, which only fires four
shots.) Virtue, although a quartermaster, is right there in the swordfights. An
interesting alien race are reptiles that can wield swords with their prehensile
tales, which ends up being a problem for Blackwood.
Fantasy aside,
Coles includes enough pragmatic elements to give the story a realistic feel.
Bottlenecks in the loading of cargo threatens the ship’s ability to leave
incognito, so even Blackwood and the ship’s doctor lend a hand. When asked if
the boarding party is ready, Virtue delays answering while doing a calculation
in her head for rigging the boats for assault and equipping fifteen sailors in
armor and weapons. She says it will take over an hour. With only enough water
left for a one-way trip to a pirate base, the captain gambles that they will
win and find the water to return home. (They don't recycle water. Fantasy, y'know?)
Although Blackwood
is a royal himself, he does not fully understand his society’s unwritten rules.
He and Virtue have a growing affection for each other. Then he gets furious
when he sees her and the royal cadet kissing. Later, Virtue explains
angrily that she had to play along. A royal could rape her and not be punished
for it. This does make their society less likable, but it is somewhat akin to
preferring the British Empire to the pirates they fight.
Fraternization is
frowned on, so Blackwood’s inner conflict is to not let his growing love for
Virtue adversely influence his decisions concerning her and the rest of the
ship. Virtue really doesn’t have much inner turmoil to work through—she mainly
reacts to what happens.
Overall, Winds
of Marque has good tension and intense fight scenes. If one can accept
old-style ship action set in space, the story flows nicely.
Star Splitter. Matthew J.
Kirby (Penguin Young Readers Group 9780735231665, $18.99, hc. 320pp) April
2023.
Seventeen-year-old
Jessica Mathers wakes up in a body printer. This is the fastest way to travel
from Earth—to have her data transmitted and assembled. But something has gone
horribly wrong. No one is there on the spaceship in orbit of a distant planet to
help her recover. She finds blood on a console and a bloody handprint in a
corridor. Then she realizes she is not on the spaceship, but in one of its
landers that crash-landed on the planet. Outside, she finds the graves of the
crew members. Then she meets herself—a Jessica who was printed earlier, but
whose explanations of what happened seem a little too pat.
The structure of Star Splitter
is deceptively simple: The chapters alternate between the viewpoints of the before
Jessica, whose narrative begins days earlier, and the after Jessica, whose
narrative begins after the crash. The before Jessica woke up on the spaceship,
and her parents were printed two days later. This is where we discover she is
lying to the after Jessica, since she tells her their parents never printed.
#
“And Mom and Dad
are …?”
“Like I said, they
never arrived.”
“Can we pull up
their data? What if we just establish them here?”
“I thought about
that … I checked the printer … It’s dead.”
#
The time
difference between the two viewpoints is meant to build tension as the before
Jessica reconnects with her parents, the reader knowing the entire time that
some disaster will happen. It can be a little tedious, but the after Jessica
goes through harrowing adventures, from being swept away by a river to making
her way through endless underground tunnels.
Although they are
the same person, the before Jessica is rather sulky—she hasn’t seen her parents
in six years, since they decided to explore space without her. She spirals into
an odd love/hate relationship with them. The after Jessica grows by overcoming obstacles.
She is rather plucky and does not quit, no matter what. Kirby aptly explores
both teenage paths.
Ultimately the
reader will be satisfied or dissatisfied with Star Splitter based on the
explanation of what happened, and the fates of the two Jessicas. I found the
disaster not explained convincingly. As for the Jessicas, it is ambiguous as to
whether it is a happy ending or not.
As a side note,
the first chapter is more of a prologue. It is somewhat gross and unnecessary, so
it is best to skip it.
Barbie. Directed and written by Greta Gerwig. Starring
Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu, America Ferrera, Ariana
Greenblatt, Will Ferrell. Rated PG-13 for suggestive references, brief
language. Runtime 1 hr. 54 min.
Never before have I seen a movie with so much pink in it.
Barbie is a mostly successful comedy combined with
surprisingly deep introspection. First, to get some stupidity out of the way:
There is no map showing China’s nine-dash claim to the South China Sea. It is simply
a child’s version of the world, with multiple dashed lines showing the path to
the Real World. The movie does not have constant lectures bemoaning the
patriarchy, nor does it do a triumphant smackdown of the supposed American
patriarchy. There is no grooming of children. In fact, middle school girls tell
her they haven’t played with Barbies since they “were like five years old.” There
is no trashing of the U.S. Supreme Court. Barbie simply sees a billboard of an
all-female band and mistakes them for the Supreme Court in Barbie Land. All these
accusations were from people who had not seen the movie or saw it through some
weird political lens, thus beclowning themselves. It’s a doll’s view of
reality, okay?
Our story follows Barbie (Margot Robbie) as she goes through
an epic journey of self-awareness. Barbie Land is filled with every Barbie you
have ever seen in real life, and more. Barbie can be a physicist, a doctor, a
writer, an astronaut, the president, etc. All the Barbies smile and wave in this
cartoonish land. They dance every day. Every day is perfect—for the Barbies.
Kens are simply sidekicks. Our Barbie’s Ken (Ryan Gosling) can only have a good
day so long as Barbie looks at him. She is easily distracted.
Barbie’s crisis begins when she has thoughts of death. Then
her feet go from stereotypical high heel position to flat. Horrified, the other
Barbies scream “FLAT FEET!” She seeks out Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), whose
hair was cut off and face was drawn on by her human girl. Weird Barbie tells
Barbie she must go to the Real World and find the human girl whose troubles are
affecting Barbie.
So she goes on her pink journey, with Ken tagging along. In
Barbie Land, Ken had wanted to stay the night, but was too innocent to know
why. In the Real World, construction workers make salty remarks at her. In
Barbie Land, they never had to buy anything. In the Real World, they end up
stealing clothing. Most importantly, Barbie sees sadness around her.
More importantly for Ken, a woman asks, “Sir, do you have
the time?” No one has shown him respect before. He then leaps into a belief in
an exaggerated patriarchy, where men hold all important positions. Enlightened,
he rushes back to Barbie Land.
Meanwhile, Barbie has made the appropriate connection to a female
in the Real World, and returns with mother and daughter to Barbie Land. There,
they find it has been changed into Kendom, with the Kens acting out extremely
exaggerated machismo—lots of beer and Ken wearing a fur coat?
Barbie is mostly a successful movie, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling looking every inch like a Barbie and Ken. It would have been
so easy for Margot Robbie to overact the part, but she never does. She gives a
surprisingly deep performance when Barbie is shocked by the Real World, and
then by having everything taken from her. Unfortunately, the movie fails in
what is traditionally called the third act, with a mess of a conflict between
the Barbies and Kens.
This movie is a labor of love, years in the making by
director and screenwriter Greta Gerwig. I have to rely on collectors to vouch
that every accoutrement in the movie is authentic, but life-sized. They even briefly
showed Midge, Barbie’s pregnant girlfriend. They even more briefly showed Sugar
Daddy Ken (that was a thing?). On the flip side, a middle school girl goes on a
tirade, saying Barbie ruined women’s lives, and calling Barbie a fascist.
Barbie also has outstanding dance scenes. The one towards
the start of the movie is a showstopper, with imaginative choreography and highly
skilled dance moves, and lots and lot of pastels. The one towards the end, which
features the Kens all dressed in black, is just as imaginative and skillful,
but too artistic for this movie. Also, I was shocked at what a great singer
Ryan Gosling is.
So overall, Barbie is a fun movie. It does have some amusing
cultural comments. But just enjoy it as a Barbie movie.
Bonus feature: The characters are clearly based on archetypes,
most famously found in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
The characters can slide around from one archetype to another.
Barbie is certainly Alice. Weird Barbie, who gives Barbie
two choices, is the caterpillar, who offered two sides of his mushroom. The mother
and daughter are mostly the white rabbit that Alice chases. They are sometimes
Tweedledee and Twedledum when they argue. The insane CEO and his board (which I
did not mention in the above review) are the mad hatter and his tea party. Allan,
Ken’s friend (again, not mentioned), who mischievously fights for Barbie, is
the Knave of Hearts. Ken starts out as the Cheshire cat, someone who is in and
out of Barbie’s life. He becomes the Queen of Hearts, dominating Barbie Land.