Two Movie Posters and Your Name

I was told by the ticket taker I should wait twenty minutes for the movie I was going to see. It turned out to be late by thirty-five minutes.

In the meanwhile, I took a picture of the poster for Super Troopers 3.

I’m sure that is exactly what the movie will look like. And maybe I should have had the flash on.

The I took one for Runner.

That looks more interesting. I mean the poster, not my face.

So the movie I saw was Your Name.

This was the tenth anniversary showing. See my review here.

Movie Review: Young Washington

We start with eleven-year-old George Washington (Will Joseph) after the death of his father. He had hoped to continue at school, but now he has to help his mother on the family farm. His half-brother Lawrence (John Foss) tutors him in the classics, including Cato and Plutarch, Seneca and Cincinnatus.  

The grown Washington (William Frankly-Miller) earnestly desires to be a British officer. But to be an officer, he must be a gentleman—a member of the upper class. He strives to have all the qualities of a gentleman, but he was not born into the correct family for that.

George Washington starts out as a surveyor. Lord Fairfax (Kelsey Grammer) agrees to have him survey the Fairfax lands in the Ohio Valley. Washington does better than that, trying to survey the entire Ohio Valley—a vast, unsettled wilderness. He discovers a French fort in British territory.

When he brings back the news, he is made a major in the Virginia Militia. Since this is a colonial militia, he is not officially a British officer, so he still has not achieved his goal.

The disastrous battle that ensues at the start of the French and Indian War is the center of the movie. Washington is not an effective leader. He blunders badly by ordering his men to build a fort with short walls in the middle of a lake bed. All the French and their Indian* allies have to do is wait for it to flood.

Experts who know better than I say the costumes and settings are accurate. The combat scenes are riveting. They have a “you are there” quality with a real dirtside view, without being explicit in the violence. And there is lots of mud. The contrast between those scenes and the elegant chambers of the aristocracy is purposefully jarring.

Critics pretty much agree with all of the above, then opinions diverge. Some say the movie has a made-for-TV quality, or that it is only useful for stirring up childhood patriotism. Did they just watch the trailers and fudge it from there? Young Washington is a great movie, and I don’t often say that.

This is a badly-needed exploration of the early years of George Washington, when he fought for the British Empire. No man starts out as a great leader. This is shown to be painfully true in the case of Washington. This is no hagiography or children’s story. The movie convincingly shows how he learned from his blunders to become not only a man, but a leader of men.

His bad decision concerning Fort Necessity might not be covered much in schoolbooks. But it is essential to understanding the man. William Frankly-Miller does a fantastic job of showing Washington as a young officer way out of his depth, fanatically yelling at his men to prepare for battle, then not knowing what to do when the French and Indians rain murderous bullets onto them.

Mary-Louise Parker does not quite look convincing as his mother Mary Washington, who was a hard-working farmer’s widow. But her harangue to George that the Lord wants him to learn wisdom from his mistakes is a fascinating scene. Also, Ben Kingsley is just about perfect as the snobbish Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie, who is unimpressed by Washington when he sends him out to give an ultimatum to the French, and who is then outraged that a battle ensued.

The main inaccuracy in the movie is showing a romance between Washington and Sally Cary. This did not happen. In reality he only met her after she married. Apparently this was added to appeal to women.

An anachronistic element was added by showing an Indian chief wanting to meet Washington. He had instructed his men to shoot Washington, but none of them could. The chief concluded a great spirit was protecting him. In more than one battle, Washington did have bullets tear through his uniform without leaving a scratch on him, and he did have two horses shot out from under him in a single battle. But this particular conversation occurred later in his career.

These minor criticisms do no serious injury to the film. Young Washington is a great movie that not only shows George Washington’s role in the French and Indian War, but also the tumultuous events that made him the leader he ultimately became.

*A historically accurate term for Native-Americans at the time.

Review of Masters of the Universe

I never watched the animated series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe or read the comic books. But one reviewer said this movie was not as bad as some people thought it would be, so I took a chance and went to see it.

We are immediately plunged into Eternia, a world of vaguely high Medieval architecture and modern-looking body armor. The young of the aristocracy are ruthlessly trained to be warriors. Adam, the son of the king, is the smallest of them and quite hapless. A girl named Teela tries to encourage him, though she could knock him down.

The kingdom is invaded by Skeletor, who pretty much looks like his name. His forces use an odd combination of weapons: high-tech devices what never run out of ammo, and traditional bladed weapons. The power of Eternia is contained in the Sword of Power, so Adam and the Sword are sent through a portal to our world. Alas, the force of the portal rips the Sword from his hands.

We skip fifteen years to find Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) stuck in a dead-end job in human resources. He is subject to tortuous sessions on communication and de-escalation. But he spends every spare minute on endless online searches for the Sword. Will he find it?

Not to spoil anything, but the rest of the movie would be realllly boring if he never did.

Masters of the Universe is a fun combination of over the top action and wry self deprecation. The action involves extremely complex CGI, sometimes too fast for the eye to follow. The best example of the humor is when Adam grasps the Sword in Eternia and calls the overwhelming power into him. Teela (Camila Mendes), who is now grown up and devastatingly lovely, cries out, “We are saved!” The next moment, the sword is knocked from his hand. Teela says, “We are screwed.”

Adam is no reluctant hero. He yearns to be one, but is anything but a hero in our world. Even in Eternia, when he has the sword, he is often bumbling around. But the stakes are high. Skeletor has killed thousands of people. When Adam asks Teela why Skeletor is so evil, she replies, “His face is a skull.” Enough said.

What could be a moral to the story comes from sensitivity training smashing into ultimate evil. Adam uses his human resources training to try to communicate and to de-escalate situations, and he always fails. Duncan (Idris Elba), a worn-out warrior, tells him that muscles are needed. Although not denying that attempts to communicate are important, we see that sometimes evil must be destroyed by a muscular hero (in this case, one swinging a sword.)

So Masters of the Universe is not the politically correct superhero movie some dreaded. It is more of a partial sendup of sensitivity training, using a he-man kind of character.

One disadvantage of the movie is long emotional one-on-one scenes, even while battles are going on? There are a few cases of foul language and swearing, which are not only inappropriate, but do not match the tone of the movie.

Overall, this was a successful transformation of a comic-booky story into a movie that does not take itself too seriously.

Movie Review: Project Hail Mary

Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up to a breathing tube being taken out of his mouth and a computer asking him what two plus two is. Not able to answer the cognitive question correctly at the moment, he is dragged out of his sleeping pod. He climbs a ladder and finds two other sleeping pods, but the people in them are dead. Grace blunders about through an amazing amount of loose equipment until he finds a window. The stars out there reveals he is in space. What’s worse, he is on a trip taking him far out of the solar system.

Grace does not remember how he got there. As he tries to figure out how to run the spaceship, his memory comes back to him in dribs and drabs. He was a middle school science teacher. Students asked him about the dimming of the sun. He acknowledged this was happening, and it was linked to the Petrova line, which goes from the sun to Venus.

Scientists discovered this line was composed of microorganisms dubbed the Astrophage. A high-level government agent Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) recruited him to work on this. It turns out Grace was a microbiologist who was shunned for insisting that life can exist without water. Dispirited, he ended up teaching middle school. But in a government lab, he finds the Astrophage is composed of individual cells. They absorb enough energy from the sun to travel to Venus. Why? They are attracted to the carbon dioxide on Venus, where they breed using the carbon dioxide.

This is causing the dimming of the sun. In about thirty years, all life on Earth will be dead.

Other stars are being infected, presumably by the Astrophage. But one star, Tau Ceti, is not. The Hail Mary spacecraft is assembled for a three-person crew. They will hopefully go to Tau Ceti, find out why it is not being affected, and send the information back to Earth via probes. If the information is relevant, and scientists can do something useful with it, the Earth may be saved. (The movie does not describe it, but the Hail Mary pass is a desperate move in American football, so the name of the spaceship reflects the improbable nature of the mission.)

There is only enough fuel for a one-way trip. This is a suicide mission.

Back in Grace’s present, the Hail Mary has been under constant acceleration, providing Grace with a sense of gravity. But when it reaches a planet orbiting Tau Ceti, the drive cuts out. Now in fully-realized zero gravity, he scrambles around in the pilot seat. The pilot was one of those who died, so Grace has no idea what he is doing. Will he figure out how to pilot the ship, and will he find anything useful to save Earth?

Project Hail Mary is a fun movie designed to appeal to viewers who don’t necessarily know a whole lot of science. It has the opposite of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s serious and well-disciplined crew. A surprising scene showed the Hail Mary’s crew preparing to leave by drinking and singing in a bar. It is also the opposite of The Right Stuff. Grace is not cut out for this mission, and he knows it. He is the wrong stuff.

One has to get used to Ryan Gosling’s face, since much of the movie focuses on him. But that’s not a problem for most people. He has an everyman nature about him, whether he is tearfully sending his dead crewmates out for a space burial, or using his scientific genius to try to find a way to defeat the Astrophage.

I had never seen Sandra Hüller before. Much of her work has been done in Germany. The movie certainly takes advantage of her expressive face and surprisingly expressive voice. Her character of Eva Stratt will surprise you.

P.S. If you stay and watch the end credits, you will see that Meryl Streep really did say a sentence as a voice actress.

P.P.S. The current ad for the movie reveals a lot. In fact, if you are planning on seeing the movie, don’t watch any ads for it. Or any interviews with the actors.

SPOILERS *** SPOILERS***SPOILERS

This isn’t exactly a spoiler anymore, because the current ad for the movie takes a lot of the surprise out of it.

The spider-like, asymmetrical alien named Rocky is creepy. It took me a while to get used to it. Obviously, this is on purpose, so our experience will track with Grace’s,

In the bar scene, it looks like Eva Stratt is developing feelings for Ryland Grace. This becomes a great head fake with her surprise song.

Most moviegoers do not understand how to simulate gravity in science fiction. They did a great job showing what happens when acceleration is turned off, then the spaceship has to spin to simulate gravity in a different way.

CRITICISMS ***CRITICISMS***CRITICISMS

The movie doesn’t work.

I am referring to the movie, not the book, into which the author Andy Weir poured in an immense amount of scientific research.

The Hail Mary spins fast enough to give a G-force of 1g. This would make for an immense Coriolis effect (which I won’t attempt to explain here) in that size of a spacecraft. Grace would have to lean crazily to the right or left to compensate. More likely, the spacecraft would tear itself apart.

When the Hail Mary is diving too deep into the planet’s atmosphere, Rocky starts it spinning again. Fine. This keeps Grace’s face from being smushed into a console. But how does that rescue them from burning up in the atmosphere? The movie definitely shows the spinning gets them out of danger, but with no explanation.

For this next part, remember that I am criticizing the movie, not the book. The Astrophage take energy from the sun to go to Venus. Why? Because they are drawn to the carbon dioxide (actually, a part of the infrared spectrum that implies carbon dioxide). Grace shows this convincingly in the lab, when cells zip away to that infrared. In space, he and Rocky discover a bacteria that will eat the Astrophage. This will kill the Astrophage on Venus and Rocky’s equivalent of Venus.

So what? There is no explanation as to why that would stop the Astrophage infection from maintaining the Petrova line as they take energy from the sun to Venus.

On a different subject, Rocky tells Grace the return trip to Earth would take only four years. That would be about three times the speed of light. There is no mention of time dilation. It would simply take four years.

Although I liked the human interactions, the scientific flaws lead me to dislike the movie. 

Movie Review: Mercy

Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) wakes up in a metal chair. In fact, his wrists are locked in to the chair arms. In front of him is a huge flatscreen showing a close-up of a woman’s face (Rebecca Ferguson). She turns out to be an AI.

The AI informs Chris he is on trial, but he already knows what this is. In Los Angeles, the crime and homeless problems have become so bad, the traditional courts were overwhelmed. A new system was put in place: Sophisticated AI judges preside over criminal cases now. A case only lasts 90 minutes, which has cleared the caseload. Oh, and the accused is presumed guilty and has to prove his innocence. The chair nicely doubles as the execution spot.

Chris is accused of the murder of his wife Nicole (Annabelle Wallis). Chris is shocked. He didn’t know she was dead. The courtroom has multiple screens that zoom in, zoom out, and project in 3-D. Footage shows him pulling into work, but abruptly pulling out. He goes to his house, where Nicole forbids him to come in, saying it’s not his house anymore. He goes in. After some minutes, he comes out.

Nicole was stabbed to death. Her blood was found on Chris’ clothing. No one else went in an out during that time period, since their daughter was away. Chris doesn’t remember what happened.

As the case unfolds, it turns out Chris is a lapsed alcoholic. Videos show him in violent bouts of rage. Chris is crushed. He starts to wonder if he did kill Nicole.

But he makes requests for other video footage, as is his right. The AI judge snoops into files in a way we would currently find intrusive—especially with so many cameras around. Think your doorbell cameras are your business? Think again. It turns out Nicole was seeing another man. Chris contacts his partner, Jaq (Kali Reis), as is his right. Jaq takes off on her mini-helicopter, which is slightly larger than a motorcycle. Will this new development help Chris?

I was intrigued by this movie because of the sharp divide in reviews. A very popular site showed the professional reviewers gave a positive rating of only somewhat over 20%. But average viewers gave it over 80%. It’s true that every audience is a selective audience, so it can have its own bias. And yet, this is a science fiction mystery and detective movie starring Chris Pratt. Not a bad bias.

Mercy was an enjoyable thrill ride. The story unfolds in real time, so we watch as Chris desperately tries to figure out what is going on in 90 minutes. It’s interesting to watch Chris Pratt struggle in the chair he’s locked into at each plot twist, looking like his blood pressure is jetting up. And speaking of jetting, the mini-helicopter looks completely real when taking off, flying, and going into a hard landing. Chris sees all this on the multiple screens in the courtroom, while other developments play on others.

Rebecca Ferguson is fascinating at the AI Judge. Her beautiful face says outrageous things to Chris about the judicial process without changing expression. But she suddenly shows emotion at various developments, which is disorienting, as it’s obviously meant to be.

Does the investigation get breakthroughs a little too fast at times? Yes. But they are good at doing some information overload to cover that.

So I’ll side with the rest of the audience in saying Mercy is an enjoyable but disquieting view of a future with Ais given too much of a role in society. As a caution, Chris Pratt’s first few sentences are filled with vulgarities as he tries to figure out what is going on. Thankfully, the rest of the movie doesn’t sound like that.

Charlie Brown: The Hero’s Journey

If you love “A Charlie Brown Christmas” as an ideal children’s story, you might not want to read this. Analyzing something beloved can take the magic out of it. If you’re afraid of that, you shouldn’t even look at this. Don’t peek.

***

SITUATION NORMAL: The Peanuts kids, in this case ice skating. Some children’s stories have children interacting with adults or magical creatures, but this will only have children.

CHARACTER IN A SITUATION WITH A PROBLEM: The situation was described above, with the overall context of Christmas. Our protagonist is CHARLIE BROWN. He feels depressed, but the deeper problem is he does not know the meaning of Christmas.

SIDEKICK: Linus, his friend who carries a security blanket, listens carefully to Charlie Brown. He will turn out to be the sidekick.

ANTAGONIST/EARLY CONFLICT: Snoopy, the antagonist, snaps Charlie Brown from ice skating into a tree. Note the importance of trees in this story.

MENTOR: Lucy plays a number of roles, but here as an amateur psychiatrist, she is the mentor. She tells Charlie Brown that his recognizing he has a problem is important.

HERALD/DENIAL OF CALL: Lucy is now outside her psychiatrist booth. She tells Charlie Brown he should be the director of the Christmas play. He is not sure.

DARKNESS PRESENTS ITSELF: Charlie Brown observes Snoopy decking out his doghouse with a multitude of decorations. Snoopy hands him a flier that announces the true meaning of Christmas is in decorations, and a contest will have “money, money, money” as the prize.

ACCEPTANCE OF CALL: Charlie Brown tells his little sister Sally that he will direct the Christmas play.

ALLY BECOMES ADVERSARY: Sally tells Charlie Brown she wants a multitude of gifts. As an alternative, she would accept a lot of money. Charlie Brown runs away in frustration.

FIRST INCITING INCIDENT: Charlie Brown arrives as the director.

THRESHOLD GUARDIAN: Snoopy howls disapprovingly at Charlie Brown.

FIRST TRY/FAIL: Charlie Brown tries to direct the play, but the children only want to do their own dances to music.

TRUE FACE OF DARKNESS: Lucy, as an antagonist, reveals to Charlie Brown that Christmas is a “big commercial racket. It’s run by a big eastern syndicate.”

MIDPOINT/SECOND INCITING EVENT: Charlie Brown decides to get a Christmas tree to establish the right mood. He sets out with his sidekick, Linus.

SECOND TRY/FAIL: Charlie Brown and Linus continue on their quest. Linus points out the numinous: searchlights in the distance. They enter the land of the fantastic: shiny aluminum Christmas trees. Charlie Brown sees a little wooden Christmas tree. He thinks it needs him, and out of compassion, chooses it.

Charlie Brown and Linus return with the little tree. The other children react with anger. Then they laugh at him.

REVELATION: Defeated, Charlie Brown cries out, asking if anyone knows what Christmas is all about.

Linus goes on stage, and in a soliloquy, tells the actual Christmas story. (This is Luke 2:8-14.)

Charlie Brown walks out with his little tree, happy.

REMINDER OF DARKNESS/THIRD INCITING INCIDENT: Charlie Brown sees Snoopy’s doghouse, which is extraordinarily decorated. He sees that Snoopy won first prize. 

THIRD TRY/FAIL/DEATH: Charlie Brown takes an ornament from the doghouse and puts it on top of the little tree. The top of the tree keels over to the ground. Charlie Brown says, “I’ve killed it.” More depressed than ever, he walks off.

CLIMAX:

Sacrifice; Linus, the sidekick, sacrifices his security blanket to revive the little tree.

The children despoil Snoopy’s doghouse and decorate the tree with it, turning it into a glorious tree.

Adversary reverts to ally: Charlie Brown’s sister Sally participates.

Antagonist become ally: Snoopy allows his decorations to be transferred.

Charlie Brown returns, and is astonished to see his little tree is now glorious.

The children cry out, “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!”

RESOLUTION: The children sing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” verse 1.

***

In writing this, I was not trying to make people mad by referring to Snoopy or Sally as adversaries. I am convinced that the staying power of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is based on Charlie Brown going through a mini-hero’s journey. It is not just a series of cute scenes, like a couple of the lesser efforts of Peanuts’ specials.

So if you feel an irresistible desire to watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” every year, there is a deep reason for it.

Movie Review: Back to the Future

Back to the Future was recently screened in theaters for its fortieth anniversary. Suffice it to say, I never saw it in a theater until now. As for the plot: Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), a cool high schooler, goes back in time from 1985 to 1955. Hilarity ensues. I can’t think of any way to summarize the plot without giving away too much. If you see it, remember to say “Calvin Klein” at a certain point.

So just to give a few “meta” comments: Through a stroke of genius, they used a Delorean as the time travel machine. It’s probably the most well-recognized time machine, at least in America (no offense to Doctor Who). When many people see a Delorean, they think of the movie.

It’s hard to describe how this movie affected the zeitgeist of the time. Grown men in offices would imitate Marty’s skateboard moves (with their feet on the floor). Women would talk endlessly about how cute Michael J. Fox was in the role. People in business meetings would talk about scenes in the movie not just before the meetings, but during them. 

Also, Erica is played by Lea Thompson, who previously was the quiet girl Erica in Red Dawn. 

As a minor note, the phrase “Great Scott” had pretty much died out, but Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) used it a number of times, which briefly brought it back into use. For some reason, I didn’t like Doc Brown at all the first time I saw it on TV, but I liked him really well while watching it in a theater.

Back to the Future had a massive influence on the culture of the 80s. No other movie was as influential until The Matrix came along in 1999. If you’re not old enough to remember Back to the Future when it came out, just think of the impact of The Matrix.

image by LSDSL

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Princess Mononoke

I recently saw Princess Mononoke in a theater. It was a treat to see it on a big screen. I will not  try to summarize the plot, which concerns nature gods in Japan. But for those who have seen it, consider these themes:

The gods are cruel. I know the movie tried hard to make a distinction between a god in its natural state and a god who has turned into a demon. But such a being can arbitrarily decide to wipe out an entire village. When one goes beyond bowdlerized versions of myths and legends for boys and girls, it becomes clear the ancients and the Japanese until relatively recently characterized the gods as cruel.

Mononoke is an allegory. As human civilization advances, especially with the smelting of iron, the gods become weaker and withdraw. This fast-paced drama in its own way shows that as civilization advances, belief in the old gods fades and eventually dies out.

At the same time, the gods are real. Even though this story is an allegory, at the same time it portrays the gods as real. If one offends or even attacks the gods, they react with terrifying fury. Though some movies in the West do the same sort of parallel messaging, Mononoke is non-Western storytelling.

We have seen these characters before. I will go out on a limb and say Prince Ashitaka is the real main character. While on a quest, villagers who did not know him before sense he is a natural leader and are willing to follow his orders. Contrary to some previews, Lady Eboshi of Irontown is not an evil character. She is quite civil and represents scientific and technological advancement. Princess Mononoke is led by her emotions. She helps in healing Prince Ashitaka and is constantly hostile towards Lady Eboshi.

These are archetypal characters that can be found in Medieval morality plays. We have them in Star Trek: The Original Series as Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Dolly the Vampire Slayer—Reprise

Dolly Parton has been in the news a lot recently. In October, the State Department granted her the 2024 PEACE Through Music Award. Then in November, she was #1 in Billboard’s 100 Greatest County Artists of All Time.

This gives me enough reason to reprise my 2020 post, Dolly the Vampire Slayer.

________________________________

Or this could be called “Slay Belle.” So this is the convergence between Dolly Parton, country music star, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Dolly Parton rocketed to fame with her hit song “9 to 5,” which was the centerpiece of the 1980 movie of the same name. She became famous not only as a country singer, but as a symbol of what nowadays is called female empowerment.

Then there is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is the TV series that jumpstarted the subgenre knows as urban fantasy. Were there some urban fantasy novels before Buffy? Sure. But it was the Buffy series that made urban fantasy an overwhelming subgenre in novels, movies, and TV shows.

So how did that happen? It turns out Dolly Parton was an uncredited producer of the original movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That’s right. And Dolly’s company financed the TV series. It was Dolly Parton behind it all the time! 

 photo by Eva Rinaldi

But what if Dolly hadn’t done that? See my post What if Buffy had Never Been? to see how life as we know it would be different. Meanwhile, you can see every season opening for Buffy below, including the musical episode.

Then you’ll definitely want to see my post Buffy the Vinyl Slayer.

Labors of Love: Megalopolis, The Apostle, Coriolanus

I have not seen Megalopolis. I know that a lot of people walked out on it, while some critics found some artistic merit. This is not a negative blog, so I will draw no conclusions about it. My point is that it is a labor of love.

Francis Ford Coppola spent decades working on this movie. Instead of a production company shouldering the cost, he reportedly sold part of his wine business to finance it. This is what makes a movie a labor of love: A man considers himself a visionary (women don’t tend to do this), he spends years working on a project, and he cannot convince people in the business to pony up the funds for it.

These labors of love usually don’t work. The visionary isn’t as great as he thinks he is. Years of work poured into a project doesn’t make it great. And there are usually good reasons why people in the business do not want to invest in it.

Having said that, I have seen two labors of love that have worked.

The older one is The Apostle. This was written by, directed by, and starred Robert Duvall. He had had a career high when he won an Oscar for Tender Mercies. He then had a good but ordinary career after that. Somewhere in there he was working for years on this labor of love. Producers turned him down because they said audiences didn’t want to see a movie about religion, so he had to use his own money.

He plays a holy roller preacher who is a raving egomaniac. No matter what he does, he considers himself a servant of God, though he admits he is a “womanizer” and commits a horrific act of violence. Farrah Fawcett gives a surprising turn as his wife, who wants a divorce. Contrary to what some people have said, this is not a story of redemption. He christens himself The Apostle and starts a new church.

Critics and audiences alike consider it a masterpiece. I was astonished by Duvall’s fearless acting. You really need to see Robert Duvall as a holy roller in the rural South.

The other triumphant labor of love that I have seen is Coriolanus. This was directed by and starred Ralph Fiennes. I believe he spent five years on this project. He didn’t pony up his own money, so I may be contradicting myself here. But he made the controversial decision to show the story in modern dress, using modern military equipment. I usually detest such things (there was one modernized version of Hamlet that I truly hated). But I was suitably impressed by this version of Coriolanus.

Purists will note that whole swaths of dialogue from the play were left out, as they decided to make a trim, taut story. His mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and his wife (Jessica Chastain) are turned into fierce women, which is fine by me. Warning: One character commits suicide, which was not in the play, and may be disturbing.

So choose a labor of love and see what you think.

Movie Review: Reagan

Reagan is a biography of Ronald Reagan, an actor who became a two-term governor of California and a two-term president of the United States. This is a more traditional sort of biography: There is no attempt to go smoothly from one major part of his life to another. Instead, it focuses in great detail on certain strategic moments. For instance, it completely skips his negotiating with Congress to pass massive tax cuts that made the economy prosper. But it focuses in surprising detail on the Reykjavik summit with the Soviets to reduce nuclear weapons, down to his wearing an ordinary suit despite the cold, to look more like a leader.

The movie wisely does not cover the fifty-three films he made. Instead, it focuses on his successful attempts to prevent Communists from taking over the Screen Actors Guild, a struggle that many of his fans are not aware of.

The theme of Reagan is his unfaltering opposition to Communism. He did what he could when he was governor of California, but it was when he became president that the movie compellingly shows his victory after victory.

Reagan was completed in 2021. Dennis Quaid, who has had quite the film career, had reached the level of gravitas by then to portray the president. There are uncanny scenes in the film when he sounds like Reagan, and he even looks like Reagan for a few moments. Penelope Ann Miller does a sprightly job of portraying his wife Nancy. For fans of Kevin Sorbo, he does a brief appearance as the minister of the Disciples of Christ church where Reagan was raised.

Some have accused this movie of hagiography. (The proper use of this term has to do with pious accounts of the lives of saints. In movies and literature, it is a highly critical term that means a biography that portrays the subject as someone who can do no wrong, and which leaves out any problems.) This is not true. Reagan spends a surprising amount of time on his making schlock commercials at the bottom of his acting career, so that he bitterly referred to himself as a “clown.” It also shows the Iran-Contra scandal, and Reagan finally admitting in a speech that his administration had indeed traded arms for hostages. And it does show the tragic nature of his Alzheimer’s, when he could not remember he had once been president.

This movie should be recommended to everyone who is too young to remember those years.

The funniest line in the movie occurs after Soviet Premier Brezhnev dies, followed in quick succession by Andropov and Chernenko. A frustrated Reagan slams down a phone and asks, “How can I establish communications with them when they keep dying on me?”

These were crucial and dangerous times, and the movie shows us Ronald Reagan’s role in them.

Donald Sutherland Passed Away

The long-time actor Donald Sutherland passed away on 6/20. Most young people will think of him as the head bad guy in The Hunger Games franchise. If he intimidates you, then good.

Donald Sutherland's own work

Such people might be surprised to know that before that, he was generally viewed as a nice guy. One hotel worker said he was very humble. He was so well-favored, for a long time his voice was used for a series of orange juice commercials.

I remember him most for his role in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). He was the protagonist, so the audience was supposed to be rooting for him. It’s not to everyone’s taste, but neither is The Hunger Games franchise.

So I was sad to hear of his passing. He was quite the actor.  

public domain

Movie Review: Spy x Family: Code: White

Yes, that made for a lot of colons in the title.

This will not be a detailed review of Spy x Family: Code: White. Imagine mashing Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Spy Kids. The father, Loid, is actually Agent Twilight. The mother, Yor, is actually the assassin Thorn Princess. Neither knows the other’s true identity. They go by the family name Forger. Anya is their pretend daughter, who was actually an orphan. But Anya is secretly a telepath, so she knows her parents’ true identities.

The story starts out in a fairly credible manner. Anya needs to make a dessert as a school assignment. Loid has inside information that the principal likes what looks like a meringue, so they go on a trip to a restaurant in the town the principal was from.

Then everything turns into kooky fun. Anya accidentally swallows a chocolate that contains something crucial for Cold War-esque tensions, and it’s off we go. It alternates between serious and childish scenes, but there is never a dull moment.

The background seems to be an alternate Europe, with much of the plot taking place in what looks like an alternate Switzerland. The story is pre-cell phone: There is even an old-style rotary phone in one scene.

Spy x Family: Code: White (the x is silent) is rated PG-13 for violence and occasional foul language. There is also an extended “poop god” dream that would be unimaginable in an American-made film, but is run-of-the-mill in Japan. 

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.

 

Sprint into Fun: Review of The Flash

The Flash. Directed by Andy Muschietti. Starring Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, Sasha Calle, Michael Shannon, Ron Livingston, Maribel Verdu, Ben Affleck. Rated PG-13 for partial male nudity, violence, foul language. Runtime 2 hours 24 minutes. 

After the obligatory action scene at the start (and who doesn’t love a superhero who saves babies and a dog), we move on to the central angst for Barry Allen aka the Flash (Ezra Miller): He is worried for his father, who is falsely imprisoned for the murder of Barry’s mother when he was a child. Overwrought, the Flash runs wildly fast and finds he traveled a short distance into the past.

Naturally, he wants to go back in time and prevent the death of his mother. Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) cautions him against this, saying he could destroy everything. Barry says he could also save Bruce’s parents. Bruce wisely says “these scars we have make us who we are." The emotional tug is too strong for Barry, so he goes back and does save his mother.

The way he saves her is reminiscent of the Isaac Asimov novel The End of Eternity, when a time traveler moves an ordinary-looking can and changes the course of a civilization. In this case, Barry has somehow removed the metahumans (Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman). What we have left is Batman, an ordinary human. Michael Keaton fills the cape in this alternate universe, and it’s a hoot seeing him as a burnt-out Bruce Wayne who no longer wants to fight the good fight.

Most of the dialog and character interplay are between Barry and a younger, pre-Flash version of himself. Because he didn’t quite come back to the present, the older, driven Barry has constant arguments with the college-age, carefree, obnoxious Barry. Ezra Miller is more than capable of filling both roles. While I was watching the movie, I wasn’t conscious of the fact that it was the same actor playing two characters; they seemed to be two different people.

Sasha Calle is a revelation as the anti-hero Supergirl. (Remember, Supergirl arrived on Earth after Superman, and that's why she exists in this universe.) This Supergirl brutally kills several bad guys. But at first she stays aloof from a world-threatening invasion. As she points out, she’s a Kyptonian, not a human.

Overall, The Flash is a treat for superhero fans. Although, the outfits are too tight in the loin area, if you know what I mean. One does not have to be a geek to recognize a number of multiverse cameos. And the plot holds up. They avoid the futility of endless cycles of endless multiverses, as well as the simplistic idea of always going back in time to fix things when something bad happens. This is more of a cautionary tale than just a show of superpower.

Book and Movie Reviews—New Style

In the past, I’ve said this is not a negative blog. I’ve tried to avoid making negative comments on books and movies. This has prevented me from reviewing some books, because to be honest I would have had to say some negative things. From now on I’m going to give the sort of reviews one might read in magazines, which discuss both strengths and weaknesses.

Also, I’m not going to give a SPOILER alert anymore. Obviously, I will not try to spoil a book or movie for anyone. But the reader should be able to sense that the farther one reads a review, the more that might be revealed.

So this is still not a negative blog. But the style will change to be more in conformity with professional reviews.

photo by Christian Bohr

Movie Review—Suzume

Suzume is a high schooler in Kyushu who was orphaned when she was a little girl. She has been living with her aunt for ten years. One day a young man asks her if there are any ruins nearby. Intrigued, she goes there herself. She sees a lone door standing amidst wreckage. When she opens it she sees an otherworldly realm, but cannot reach it. She also sees a carving of a cat, which see pulls out of the ground. It comes to life and runs away.

After that, a monstrous creature comes out of the doorway, causing an earthquake. She and the young man—Souta—are barely able to close the door and avoid disaster. It turns out the cat was a guardian meant to keep the door closed. Suzume and Souta chase the cat across Japan, trying to shut other doors and prevent ever-increasing disasters.

Suzume has flashbacks of herself as young child, wandering around, looking for her mother. But are these memories? Or is she seeing herself in that other realm?

Suzume ranges from scenes of delicate beauty to looming horrific disaster. This is high quality animation, with good detail and realistic motion, no matter how odd the chase scenes are. What stuck in my mind was the kindness Suzume experiences on her journey: From a young woman her age hauling fruit, to a mother who sees her at a bus stop where the next bus will not come for hours, they all want to help her. Suzume does chores for room and board, which is heartening so see.

The director, Makoto Shinkai, has openly said he was influenced by Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, which also involves preventing an earthquake. That in turn must have been influenced by the Japanese myth of Namazu, the giant catfish beneath Japan that causes earthquakes.

The movie has a couple of weaknesses. I suppose this is where I put SPOILERS. Suzume and Souta spend the movie as travel buddies. Then towards the end she tells her aunt that she loves him. This is very sudden. Also, her aunt becomes unaccountably cruel in one scene and tells Suzume she wasted the best years of her life caring for her. It is unclear if another door guardian is making her say these things, but it is unsettling.

So Suzume is well worth watching. Definitely do not walk out the minute the credits start rolling. For those of you who are Makoto Shinkai fans and love his movie Your Name, have your friends watch Suzume first. It is hard for Shinkai to live up to his masterpiece, Your Name.

Shazam 2—A Caution

Shazam! Fury of the Gods starts off where the first movie left off, in terms of storytelling. If you did not see the first movie, it is not clear at all which high school kid turns into Shazam. It’s Billy Batson. But his foster brother Freddy Freeman kind of dominates the first part of the movie, so a viewer might conclude it’s Freddy.

 

So to get people caught up, when Billy yells “Shazam!’ he turns into that superhero (played by Zachary Levi). Now his foster siblings (Mary, Freddy, Darla, Pedro, and Eugene) can do the same.

 

It turns out their powers were stolen from certain obscure Greek gods, and now they want them back, hence the title of the movie.

 

The Shazam! movies are not the dark sort of DC movies. They are meant to be more lighthearted, to draw children as well as teens and adults. So I have to warn you there is a scene where an adult commits suicide. I do not want anyone complaining I just did a spoiler. They want children and teens to see this. I am not under any obligation to hide what they show.

 

 

The original Shazam! had a good amount of humor, much of it childish. It was genuinely funny. This sequel also has humor, though not as much. I didn’t find most of it funny, but other people in the audience laughed. However, it was a good laugh when Shazam mispronounced Solomon as “Solo-Man.”

The cast made an unusually good catch with Helen Mirren as one of the Greek goddesses. Lucy Liu also looks great. But no offense, she doesn’t seem like a deep character while sharing the screen with Helen Mirren. Very few people can.

As for Billy/Shazam, he suffers from imposter syndrome. He does not believe he deserves the powers he’s been given. So he overcompensates by demanding the foster siblings always stick together for their adventures. But his imposter syndrome stays with him. Will he be able to resolve this before the end?

SPOILERS * SPOILERS * SPOILERS

TV Review: The Ark

A sleeper ship containing dozens of people in suspended animation has a violent impact just one year short of the planet they were sent to colonize. The entire command staff was wiped out in the impact. But that is just the beginning of their problems. They only have four weeks’ worth of water. They have six weeks’ worth of food.

Lieutenant Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke) takes command. Everyone on board is an expert in something: science, engineering, etc. She assigns some of the crew to retrofit the water recycling unit meant for the colony. This is no easy task: The right equipment has to be scavenged. An attempt is made to grow food in a cargo bay. But the power requirements for the lights can impinge on the search for equipment. Always, somebody disagrees with her decisions.

There are so many problems with the premier episode of The Ark. I don’t consider anything that follows to be a spoiler. When the crew wakes up from suspended animation, they are instantly alert and able to sprint to a safer part of the ship. Seriously? They later show the compression suits they were in was what allowed them to run, but inflated pants don’t work that way.

They use the centrifugal effect (actually centripetal force) to simulate gravity. One part of the ship stopped rotating. When it starts again, people in mid-air immediately fall to the floor. Physics doesn’t work that way, man! There is no reason why people in mid-air would suddenly fall like that. They would bounce off the walls and possibly the ceiling first before settling onto the floor. (The movie Passengers had the same problem, but I digress.)

While we’re at it, the ship has two rotating sections. They rotate the same way. That would make for an intense Coriolis effect, so the whole ship would rotate against its axis. It would be better if the sections rotated in opposite directions, or had one large section rotating one way, and two smaller sections rotating a different way. (Look at Ragnar Station in the premier of Battlestar Galactica. They almost got it right.)

For the more personal matters, some jerk sarcastically addresses a woman he thinks is Russian as “comrade.” What? That was a term used in the days of the Soviet Union. Why would someone a hundred years from now use it?

There is a blonde ditz who does “Valley Girl” talk. One scene implies she is showing off her naked body. Save that for soap operas. 

Two young geeky people wear geeky glasses. Why? To let us know they are geeks. I didn’t see anyone else wearing glasses.

There are three lieutenants. The other two dispute whether Lt. Garnet should be in charge, since they are all equal. Obviously they have equal rank, but they wouldn’t have equal seniority. If one of them was promoted even a day before the others, that one would be the senior officer. Lieutenants would be well aware of who is senior to whom.

Believe it or not, this is not a negative blog. Despite all the problems, I plan to continue to watch The Ark. The challenge of how they will survive is intriguing. I like Lieutenant Garnet. Also, I like Lieutenant James Brice’s (Richard Fleeshman's) Scottish accent.