Scary Things

Somehow, I've gotten terribly behind with the blog, so I have to double up a bit in this post. I want to briefly discuss two new releases and one that's available outside of theaters. What all three films have in common is a certain "scare" factor.

 First, Ridley Scott's The Martian, which focuses on the triple fears of isolation, abandonment, and impending doom. Based on Andy Weir's captivating 2011 novel of the same name, Scott assembles a star-studded cast (Jeff Daniels, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Michael Pena, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, among others) to tell the story of Mark Watney, an American astronaut who gets left behind when a Mars mission goes terribly wrong. I think Matt Damon captures Watney's wry wit - there's a bit about Watney being a "space pirate" that's laugh-out-loud funny, for example. However, the film cuts out a good deal of the problem-solving that made the novel so compelling and, in a few places, just gets things flat-out wrong. (No, you can't use a teensy hole in your spacesuit to guide you toward your rescue ship, mostly because you'd have a bad case of the deads.) Weir likes science - in fact, he claims science makes a wonderful plot device - and it's a bit of a shame to see that serious thinking watered-down to a basic thrills-and-adventure plot. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the film and would love to see it spark interest in manned space missions again. Seriously, why don't we have a moon base yet?

Second, Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, which deals with the fear of trickery, war, and back-door deals. Okay, look - you pretty much can't go wrong with the combination of Tom Hanks, Spielberg, and American can-do attitude. In addition to working with Hanks on a number of other projects as producer, Spielberg has directed Hanks in Saving Private Ryan (where we also had to rescue Matt Damon - between that and Interstellar, Damon ought to just stay home by the fire), Catch Me If You Can, and The Terminal. Here, Hanks is in full Jimmy Stewart mode and by that, I mean he's playing a solid, honest, decent man (James Donovan) who is convinced that the rule of law will lead to the light. When called upon to defend a Soviet national accused of espionage at the height of the Cold War, he takes the unwelcome assignment (he's an insurance attorney, not a high-powered government lawyer, which is an interesting story in itself) because he truly believes that the Constitution's guarantee of a competent defense is a cornerstone of our legal system. (He's right, by the way.) His client is guilty as original sin, but Donovan's arguments spare his client the death penalty. A few years later, the pilot of one of our super-duper-top-secret U2 spy planes is shot down and Donovan is called into service to arrange for a prisoner exchange. Bridge of Spies is a compelling movie and it's at its absolute best detailing Donovan's tense days in Berlin arranging the spy swap at the very time the Berlin Wall is going up. Sure, the film takes a few liberties with the story (and there's far too little smoking for the time period!), but an amazing film and one well worth seeing in these cynical times.

Lastly, the 2014 Australian horror-thriller The Babadook. I can't say much about this without worrying about giving something important away, so I'll be brief. This film, the first major release by Jennifer Kent, scared the bejeezus out of me. There's a bit of gore, but it's mostly "head scare" and reality gets very, very warped in the hour and a half run time. One thing this film does masterfully is set you off-kilter. My allegiances changed as I started the film sympathizing with one character and found myself moving to viewing that character as the Evil of the film. What's real? What's the mind capable of believing? And how much can untreated traumas manifest in our world? The Babadook is a film that made me cringe, jump, and actually think - and many others agree with me. Don't miss this one.

Voting With Your Feet

The 2015 movie year is off to a glorious start with the wide release of Selma. What? You don't want to see a history movie? That stuff is old and boring? Besides, things have changed and we don't need to be dwelling on the past, right?

Pfffft. I'm with Faulkner on this one. The past truly isn't dead.

Selma's taking a few hits, primarily for its portrayal of LBJ. Having seen the film, I don't get that. Pres. Johnson in no way comes across as the villain of the piece; rather, he is shown to be a politician with ambitious goals. He cautions Dr. King to slow down, the time is not yet ripe for these large-scale changes in the Deep South - and Johnson fears he can't deliver the votes he needs to pass legislation that will essentially take a sledgehammer to Jim Crow. (You know, it's odd how a man's legacy gets undone. Johnson delivered on what Kennedy only had to promise - this single man muscled through the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and strengthened both the Clean Air and the Clean Water Acts, but he also escalated Vietnam, which became his defining legacy. Likewise, Alabama governor George Wallace was a champion for the poor, but his dogged insistence on maintaining the Jim Crow status quo [hmm - the "status Crow"?] is all that people remember.)

We forget. That's one reason Selma matters. We forget the sheer, raw courage it took to walk into a low-level county office and demand the petty official accept a government form. We forget the everyday indignities that were visited on our own citizens who insisted, often with an astonishing amount of grace, on being treated as full human beings. We forget how much was at stake when citizens just wanted to walk across a bridge.

People are awful. But we can change - even if it takes TV cameras to get us to do it.

Selma is going to be a heavy-hitter during awards season. And it should. No, it's not a documentary - King's speeches are approximations, since apparently the King family would not permit the actual words to be used, having licensed them to another studio for another project. Selma is not a love-fest - people are flawed, a fact Selma does not shy away from and which I completely appreciate. I want real people, not stained-glass saints. Look, these people - the everyday people (including Viola Liuzzo, whose name you should know), not just the leadership of this movement - are American heroes who stood up for the principles this country was founded on and made such a dignified, consistent nuisance of themselves that our politicians had no choice BUT to act.

Go see this movie. Now. Today. Take your kids. Stay for the credits and the the John Legend/Common song "Glory" which reminds us all, in these dark days of #JeSuisCharlie,  "The biggest weapon is to stay peaceful."And if you don't cry in at least a few places, do me a favor and don't tell me.



Before I conclude, the end of the year brought two movies that I saw but didn't post about due to an increased amount of craziness, so let me briefly touch on those.  Exodus is Ridley Scott's attempt to create a modern version of the big-screen Bible epic. He's got a great story here - Conflict! Plagues! Gigantic crowd scenes! The desire for freeeee-dom! - yet the whole movie just never lifts off. There have been loud and frequent complaints about the casting in the film, but trust me - not the only problem here. Also, the final installment of Peter Jackson's take on Tolkien's The Hobbit was just - not very good. I'll freely admit that part of my problem is the add-ons to pad this into a trilogy (look - they're walking in New Zealand! Now there's more walking in New Zealand! Oh, look - they're riding horses in New Zealand!) and in this final installment in what really could have been one stellar film rather than three lackluster ones, things reached a head. Let me just point out two items - first, never, ever, ever use your young son as your steadying point with a gigantic arrow. I'm pretty sure the fletching would rip his shoulder to shreds. Second - while I can appreciate the over-the-topness of Billy Connelly riding a boar into battle, the same cannot be said for the elf-leader's war moose. Ugh.

Also, there were so many films at the end of the year that didn't come around here - and I try to keep this a "local" blog. Still, I intend to seek out The Imitation Game, Big Eyes, The Theory of Everything, and Boyhood to name but a few.

Brave

This weekend's new pick for me and my Viewing Companion was Pixar's Brave.  I'll admit, I went in with high expectations - like Ridley Scott, Pixar knows how to make a stunner of a movie in terms of the look of the thing and on that score, Brave is wonderful.  The scenery is so detailed and realistic that I caught my breath more than once.  I wasn't sure of the storyline, though.  This is a joint effort between Pixar and Disney and I've been an outspoken critic of Disney princesses.  Don't get me wrong - I cut my milk teeth on Disney animation and I like it just fine.  However, Disney sanitizes its fairy tales to sell tickets to the Younger Set and the Mouse tends to like weak female characters.  Face it, the stories of Disney princesses tend to be of girls who are sweet and good and gentle who have bad things happen to them and who then need saving.

And don't even bother telling me to lighten up, that it's just a movie, and a kids' movie at that.  What on God's green earth could be more important than the messages we send to children?  As Brave puts it, "Legends are lessons."  We absorb a tremendous amount of identity messages through popular culture.  The rationale behind not having female-driven stories has always been that girls will go see/read stories about boys, but boys won't go see/read stories about girls.

Here's hoping the box office shatters that myth once and for all, for Brave tells a story we can all benefit from hearing.

I will admit that I sat in the darkened theatre as the credits played with tears running down my face.  Now, Pixar's made me cry before (if the first ten minutes of Up don't get you weepy, seek clinical help), but this was different.  My whole life, I've been waiting to see Brave, I just didn't know the title.  Maybe this is just a "girl thing;" I don't know.  But I've yearned to see a girl take charge of her own life.  A girl who demands that she be given the same choices that a boy would have - and the same opportunities to rule her own destiny.  Brave also does some really nice things with (of all things) hair.  Look at how wild and untamed Merida's red curls are as opposed to her mother Elinor's smooth, restrained locks - there's a nice metaphor going on there.  Also, unlike many Disney pictures, there's no evil here (which is often portrayed as female - a witch or a stepmother, for example).  In Brave,  the bad things happen because of poor choices that are made, including the failure to listen, and Merida then chooses to square her shoulders and fix the mess she created.  It's a powerful message to send to children - girls and boys both - and seeing that story told, and told so beautifully, got me to crying.

Nothing wrong with tears.  Madness often springs from the inability to shed them.

All this said, Brave has a few scenes that are probably too intense for very young children.  But they'll be old enough to benefit from this story of a strong girl raised by strong parents and the ties that bind us together soon enough.  And I'm so glad that kids are going to have this movie as a touchstone - girls and boys both will grow up thinking that Merida is pretty darned cool and we'll all better off for that.

By the way, Pixar also included a short called La Luna to go with Brave.  Absolutely gorgeous and another jewel in Pixar's crown of family-oriented stories.  Be sure you see it.

Smoke, Not Fire

This is the problem with pre-screening hype - it gets expectations up.  Instead of just having a nice little movie, it has to be the BIGGEST THING EVER!!  Instead of showcasing stylish framing and camerawork, it has to SHOCK YOUR SENSES!!  And instead of adding a puzzle piece or two to an existing storyline, it has to ANSWER ALL THE BIG QUESTIONS!!

Prometheus does none of those things, although much is promised.  It's not a bad film; in fact, director Ridley Scott shows once again that he knows how to both capture breath-taking beauty through a camera lens and how to create memorable environments for his characters to cavort within.  But ultimately, Prometheus is a movie that didn't need to be made, much less hyped to within an inch of its life.

The chief problem here is Alien, which shot Scott to A list stardom some thirty years ago.  (His position there was cemented with Blade Runner a few years later, a two-fer that made him a science fiction darling, if not a downright wunderkind.)  Alien is so good and stands up so well after all these years that . . . well, let's put it this way.  Alien is the horror equivalent of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Lee didn't write a sequel, prequel, or much of anything afterward.  It's not that Prometheus is bad; it's that it's not Alien, yet it tries to answer the questions Alien left unanswered.  Here's a tip, Hotshot.  There's no reason to answer them and trying to just feels forced.  There's a heavy patina of philosophy and theology coating Prometheus and it doesn't fit well.  It certainly can fit well in science fiction; in fact, I've said repeatedly that science fiction is a genre that is ideally suited to asking the Big Questions such as "What makes us human?" and "What really matters?"  But just because a film asks those questions doesn't make it a Good Film.


Alien is all about cramped spaces, shadowy things-that-want-to-kill-us, and figuring out how to survive as the crew are picked off, one by one.  (And a cat.)  Prometheus can't do that, because we already know what was a mystery in the first film.  We already know what the aliens are and how awful they are.  We already know the shape of the ship and the look of the bridge.  Wisely, Prometheus doesn't try to flat-out copy that.  We get a large cast of scientists who have followed cave paintings to a faraway moon in hopes of "meeting our maker."

The problems begin early.  The first scene, which is lovely and terrifying in turns, is not needed and removes any trace of mystery from the rest of the film.  The film further suffers from too large a cast - it never gels as an ensemble and there's not enough screen time to develop each character, so a few become throwaways.  The scientists aren't particularly curious about the alien civilization they've discovered, they are overly mercenary, and they make some deeply stupid decisions.  While Alien gave us Ellen Ripley,  Prometheus thinks simply passing the Bechdel Test automatically makes it a Worthy Film.  Charlize Theron's Vickers has daddy issues and Noomi Rapace's Shaw has way too much symbolism tied up in jewelry.  Alien gave us a treacherous android and a shadowy corporate agenda.  While Prometheus retains both, those elements have lost the power to shock us.  Oh, and sex is bad and pregnancy is a horror.


Prometheus is not without its moments, however.  Michael Fassbender as the android David is especially noteworthy and Idris Elba as the captain could be - I suspect there's a scene or two on the cutting room floor that should have been left in there on that score.  The scope and sweep of the cinematography is jaw-dropping and deliberately invokes David Lean (maybe a key to the android's name, now that I think about it), especially Lean's masterwork Lawrence of Arabia.

In short, Prometheus wants to be an Important Film and it tries mightily to be that.  Unfortunately, along the way, Scott substituted bombast for joy.