Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Two-Sentence Movie Summaries

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.


While You Were Sleeping: A woman pretends to be the fiancée of a man in a coma. After he wakes up, she leaves him at the altar and marries his brother instead.


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.



Friday, January 26, 2024

Movie Review: Freud’s Last Session

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.


 


Saturday, January 13, 2024

Iced Tea

Yesterday in my part of the Seattle area, the high was 22 degrees. We are not used to that sort of temperature in these parts.


I forgot my McD’s ice tea in my car overnight. This is what it looked like today, near noon.




Monday, December 25, 2023

Merry Christmas


Reindeer at Alderwood Mall

 

Alderwood Mall is in a suburb to the north of Seattle.

Friday, December 1, 2023

Book Review: Through the Storm

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.

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Eclipse of the Sun in Seattle

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.

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Military Fantasy—Review of Winds of Marque

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.

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Book Review: Star Splitter

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.  

Saturday, July 22, 2023

In the Pink— Review of Barbie

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.

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