Brothers-just because we are done with the war, doesn't mean the war is done with us

I had some friends recommend this one to me.  It is one I always meant to see, but just got around to it finally, so many films, so little time.  Brothers, about the experience of war on one family, was based on a Danish film.  For those who know that, it points out the Danes also sent soldiers to Afghanistan and have their own war experiences and trauma from that conflict.  I probably need to seek that film out. I saw many non-American soldiers in my time "over there" and I'm very curious about that conflict from their perspective.

This version of the film has Tobey Maguire as Marine Captain Sam Cahill.  He's about to head over to da 'Stan for his fourth tour of duty.  He is husband to Grace (Natalie Portman) and brother to Tommy (Jake Gyllenhall), who is a bit of a layabout, avoiding steady employment, but not jail.  So he suffers under his own inferiority complex as well as the disapproval of their Vietnam War Marine father.   When Sam's unit is attacked shortly after they arrive and he vanishes, presumed dead, a suffering Grace and the daughters welcome Tommy, who bonds with his brother's family during their time of crisis.  He helps around the house with handyman tasks and assists in caring for the girls.  There is even temptation, as a lonely Grace and a slightly drunk Tommy almost give into temptation.  But they both pull back before things get too out of control.

Then comes one day when they find out Sam did not die in Afghanistan.  He is coming home.  But when he arrives, it is clear that something is weighing on his mind.  His family can tell, his fellow Marines can tell.  He experienced something horrible over there and the psychic wound bleeds continuously.  Tommy, the ne're do well, will be instrumental in helping to bring back his brother from Afghanistan, in mind and spirit as well as body.

And there it is.  War is hell.  For some veterans, they don't get to leave.  Not without help.  This film picked its actors very, very well, depicting these characters in this situation that some families are experiencing for real after a decade of two wars.  The devastation doesn't take place only on foreign soil.  Special kudos go to Mr. Maguire and his devastating depiction of a brave soldier coping with wounds too big for one man to bear, yet having no idea how to heal.

This film is worthwhile.  Check it out.

Lucy-A Tale of Living Data

What are we, really?  That is the question ultimately asked in the new film Lucy, written and directed by French director Luc Bessen.  What are we really?  Wrestling with the "hard problem", "what is consciousness", Lucy coyly suggests an answer revealed by the adventures of the titular character.  Initially starting out as a girl who has bad choices in boyfriends, she ends up being a drug mule for some shady Asian organized crime types.  But this new stuff ends up getting inadvertently released into her system in doses far bigger than intended. And, rather than killing her, she begins to change.  Her brain is "accelerated" and begins using more and more of its potential.  This not only has the effect of making her smarter, her mind and body begin to work faster.  She begins developing powers of various kinds, at first physically improved, but becomes sublime as apparent control over spacetime.  However, she also feels her humanity is slipping away.  Eventually, she reaches out to Professor Samuel Norton (Morgan Freeman), a cutting edge neurologist, for some guidance.  After a certain point, she's in unknown territory, even for him.

I'm not going to tell you how it all ends, of course.  But this is one mad, wild ride.  Some have made hay of its improbable "science", but like most protests, it misses the point, as the movie is less about rigorous scientific accuracy and more about an ongoing cinematic thought experiment.  What if you could accelerate a person like that?  What would happen?  There have been similar explorations.  Cinematically, it would be Bradley Cooper's character in Limitless, but really, a closer approximation would be Dr. Manhattan from Alan Moore's The Watchmen.  For those who don't know, Manhattan is a scientist who was involved in an accident which utterly transforms him into something post human.  He seems to lose touch with his humanity and his ability to "feel", to connect, though we find out later, some capacity does indeed seem to still be there.  Likewise with Lucy.  She believes herself slipping away, but there are moments where it does seem something human is still there nonetheless.  However, the film does seem to take the opinion on the question on "What are we?", in that it seems to assert we are all "living data" somehow sentient, that consciousness is an emergent property from information itself and that our highest evolved form will be as pure information.

Not sure I buy that.  I think the "soul", which is what we are really talking about, is something far more sublime and profound than that, and probably is above and beyond mere data crunching.

Still, it is an interesting though.

Mad, a bit daring, different.  Lucy is a thinker's summer science fiction actioner.

Earth to Echo-E.T. as Found Footage (that somehow avoids death by cute)

See that precious little guy being pointed to in a poster that Oh So Much calls out hard to E.T The Extraterrestrial. Yeah, the comparison is intentional.  If that was all Earth to Echo was, it would not be worth your time.  There already has been a string of lame E.T. knockoffs. In fact, many of them came out around the time E.T. first made its impact on the culture (Mac and Me, Pod People), but folks still remember the original.  Earth to Echo is counting on that, but fortunately, the makers did aspire a little higher with this tale of an alien robot of some kind being shot down by government authorities on Earth (presumably the United States), seeking to repair itself and go home.

Done in found footage format, the film follows a group of high school kids who are anticipating being forced to move from their neighborhood.  Some sort of organization is forcing the families to relocate, reason unclear.  So the boys make a pact to do something epic on their last night.  At the same time, they begin getting weird signals on their portable phones which they eventually decide is a beacon to follow.  Follow they do, and when they get out to the site, they find what looks like a missle casing of some kind, as well as more of those "government" types, seemingly looking for the same thing.  When they get the casing, the get another signal.  They follow it and find another piece, which joins with the first and slowly, the casing, or the entity inside, stirs with life.

This film is not groundbreaking by any means.  But the young actors are fun and you can easily buy the adventure, especially if you were the sort of young person who went on a few adventures yourself.  As I kid, I sometimes fantasized about finding an alien spacecraft.  Or fantasized about Skylab landing in our neighborhood intacts.  And flying it again (I had a big imagination and relatively little knowledge to kill it then).

"Echo" is full of personality, which is good, because the little guy is made just too precious (obviously to engender toy sales).  They went too far with it, but fortunately, in personality he avoids being too annoying and the kids are convincing and fun.

It is a summer adventure which hearkens back to childhood quests.  If those bring back fond memories for you, or you have kids of your own who love that kind of thing, this is a movie for you.

A Serious Man-Job As Quantum Indeterminancy

I'm a latecomer to Coen Bros fandom, as I've been slowly warming up to their works, via the lenses of The Dude (The Big Lebowski) and Rooster Cogburn (True Grit).  Like, say, Wes Anderson Or Paul Thomas Anderson, these guys truly use film as art, with an identifiable voice and way of looking at the world.  I'm not enough of an expert yet on their body of work to say definitively, but if I were to tie A Serious Man to the previously mentioned films, I would say they share a combo of the wanderer in circumstance and the quasi-quest, where it is a quest the central character is indeed on, but it doesn't feel like a quest.  It feels just like circumstance after circumstance, but there seemingly is purpose, though it may not be clear.

In this case, it is Lawrence "Larry" Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) we follow on the journey.  In his case, it is watching his life seemingly unravel, with his wife wanting a divorce, the guy she is hooking up with a condescending creep.  His kids are out of control.  His job as a physics professor, previously heading for tenure, has now hit a snag.  He loses his house, his cash.  He does have the hot busty lady next door to occasionally schtupp, but admittedly, that is small comfort in a world that is seemingly falling apart.  He goes to his mathematics for certainty...but according to quantum theory, of which he is intimately familiar with the mathematical proof, there is none.  And finally, he turns to his faith as a Jew.  He struggles there, as the senior Rabbi seems disengaged and the lower level Rabbis unhelpful.  But at least he sees hope in his son's approaching Mitvah.  But then...

Is it all destined to fall apart?  The film opens up with what looks like a Hebrew folk tale and the awakening of a curse.  The appearance of Larry's life looks like such a curse manifesting in full vengeance.

Yet, somehow Larry manages to maintain a brave face in the face of all this uncertainty.  He does trust his science.  He does trust his God.  Even in the face of Armageddon which seemingly approaches, he has faith that it all has meaning and in the end, it will be ok.

That is faith for our times.

Not an easy film.  But a worthy one.

Really effectively recreated 60s suburbia, too.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes-This Movie Does More Than Just Ape The First...

People like monkeys.  It is true.  I know, monkeys aren't apes and vise versa, but it is true.  Our nearest neighbors in the animal kingdom draw endless interest with humans wanting to eyeball their antics. Seeing these beings so...familiar doing the simplest of things to the most amazing or intricate just naturally draws our facination.  And in some cases, inspires dread and paranoia.  All these things come to a head in the Planet of the Apes series.  It started with a novel published in 1963, then a film starring Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowall, regarded as one of the classics of 60s science fiction cinema, debuted in 1968.  Since then, with movies, books, TV shows and the like of varying levels of quality, the franchise has shown considerable staying power.  And now, we have Dawn of the Apes, the second film in the latest incarnation.

Directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield), the second film in the new series opens up on the scenario launched at the end of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, with a super virus eliminating most of the human population globally.  Beginning to fill in the gap of a radicially diminished humanity are the now established population of sentient apes that came into existence in the first film.  Led by chimpanzee chieftain Ceasar (Andy Serkiss), the tribe of chimps, gorillas and orangutans leads an idyllic existence, with most of them thinking that humanity has died off.  One day, they find out that isn't true.  The first encounter doesn't go well, and there is deep distrust and bad feelings on both sides.  But some of the leaders of both factions recognize that conflict doesn't have to be inevitable. 

Too bad they don't all feel that way.

When the inevitable violent confrontation happens, it is not treated like an "oh wow, time to blow something up, KEWL" thing.  It is almost trudged through, shown with a weary sort of tragedy, not at all glorified.

This is one of those rare sequels that follows up a well made starter film with an even better followup that truly builds on the world established before, rather than merely "aping" the first to try to cash in.  The people who are building this world have deep affection for it and a firm idea of where they want to go with it. 

Swing on, Apes.  Swing on.

In case you are reading this, consider David Tennant or Anthony Stewart Head as Cornelius in the next film.

The Way Way Back...Meatballs With a Water Slide

I mean that in a good way.  I'll 'splain.

Meatballs was directed by Ivan Reitman in the 70s.  It starred a young Bill Murray as Tripper Harrison, the senior camp counselor at Camp North Star, a low rate summer camp.  He's irreverent, anti-authoritarian and unconventional.  He ends up befriending Rudy Gerner, a young talented kid who is a bit of an outsider and initially lacks in the confidence arena.  Through Tripper's friendship, he is able to come out of his shell and get the most out of his camp experience.

That is a scenario that can be used as a framework for many stories, especially those that take place in American culture and that zone so magical for the young uns, the summer break, when you have all that free time, sun, girls (especially swimwear clad ones), no responsibility and plenty of occasions for adventure and tomfoolery.

Unless you get dragged to someplace you don't know, forced to interact with people you don't care for and are generally miserable and would much rather be left alone.

This is the scenario now for Duncan, the young hero here.  He is the child of a single mom and her current beau (Steve Carrell), frankly, is a big of a jerk right from the get-go.  In fact, the people he is surrounded with in the first twenty minutes of the film are so unpleasant and annoying, I almost turned off the movie.  But stick with The Way, Way Back. It gets much better.

Almost out of a need for preserving his sanity, Duncan finds a rather girly bicycle and goes riding.  It gets him what he needs, that is, a certain independence and ability to break away from the madhouse of people he doesn't want to deal with.  And one day, in front of a classic Pac-Man machine, he meets Owen (Sam Rockwell), a fast talking irreverent sort who turns out to be the manager of a local water park.  Owen takes a liking to the kid and sensing he needs a friend as well as something to so during his summer, offers him a job at the park.  Duncan takes it and his summer gets much, much better.  He even meets a girl, gets some friends and helps his mother break from what looked like a collision course with an established pattern.

Yeah, I opened up comparing it to Meatballs, and yes, the basic structure is similar.  However, though fun, The Way Way Back is a bit more serious in tone and makes even more of a statement about one's personal journey and how those accompany it color said journey, for good or ill.  Choose your traveling companions wisely.

By the way, this one was written and directed by the folks from the TV show Community, which I still need to watch.  But based on what I've seen, expect lots of 80s nostalgia and geek culture touchstones here. 

You will recognize them.

Reality Bites: Generation X Sure Has Waited a Long Time For the Baby Boomes To Effing Retire Already...

The early 90s and the period just before the Clinton boom years, that is what Generation X, a generation widely regarded as a bit apathetic in the first place, that was what they had waiting for them when they began graduating from college.  Many have wondered when Generation X was going to step up and take charge of things.  Well, we had just graduated from college, the Boomers didn't just take over the world right after they graduated, either.  Maybe due to sheer numbers and relative lack of "competition", their way was much more paved, while Generation X has had to first shake off it's collective cultural slackerism, begin clawing it's way up AND wait for the Boomers to start retiring.  Which, now that we have hit the teens of the Twenty-first Century, it looks like it has finally started to happen, slowly but surely.

Right out of college, though, we did have a few who did want to make their mark.  In Reality Bites, this is represented by Lelaina Pierce (Wynona Ryder), a young grad looking to forge a career in television, starting out with an "assistant producer" position, one that she hates.  Eventually, she is fired.  This creates stresses with her friends, such as Vicki Miner (Janeane Garafalo), the one "gainfully employed" in their apartment, as a manager at The Gap.  As Lelaina films her friends for a documentary she is building on her generation, she deals with other conflicts, like her attraction/friendship with Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke), a philosophy major and dedicated nihilistic slacker.  Eventually, she meets Michael Grates (Ben Stiller, who also directs), a young executive with a cable video channel, who offers her friendship, love and even a potential direction for her professional ambitions.

Finding your path and juggling all those other elements in your life, especially when you are young and trying to get traction, can be a frustrating experience.  Heck, this is my generation and though my situation is unusual, trying to build my civilian career at 45 (and finding good success early on), we did have it a bit rough going earlier on.  Our assumed generational apathy didn't help.  And now, some say Generation Y and the Millenials will zoom past us as we finally await to assume the crowns worn by the Boomers.

But you know...nuts to that.  Cool movies, cool books and some folks coming up in executive position and politics, our generation is making their presence felt. Even in the 90s, this started to happen and I'm thinking the twenty first century will be ours.

Took us awhile to realize we care...but we do.

At The Mouth Of Madness: John Carpenter and HP Lovecraft Canoodle and Make One Creepy Baby

Is it possible that John Carpenter is even more of a pessimist than HP Lovecraft, the horror writer whose fictional cosmology held that mankind was a feeble spark in a sputtering candle in a losing battle to beat back the cosmic darkness that sought to snuff it out?  Maybe.  Let me explain...

First off, hats off to scriptwriter Michael De Luca, who wrote In The Mouth of Madness.  Reading his background, he is the nerd made good, with a childhood love of comics and science fiction made into a film career.  He did indeed capture the Lovecraftian vibe of this creeping reality bending horror that opens up with Bernie Casey as Robinson, an insurance company exec having a meeting with John Trent (Sam Neil), a freelance investigator specializing in fraud cases.   He is really good and sniffing out people trying to con his clients.  Trent is a hard nosed "realist" with a somewhat dark view of humanity, in that everyone has something to hide, everyone has an angle.  It is all about finding out what that angle is and bang, case closed.  Robinson has a big case for Trent.  Seems that his biggest client is a book publisher whose biggest author is Sutter Kane (Jurgen Prochnow), a popular horror writer who has vanished on the verge of his new novel being published.  The company has an insurance policy against this possibility and Robinson wants to make sure he is not being ripped off.  Their meeting is interrupted by Kane's agent.  Who has an axe.  And really weird eyes.

Trent takes a meeting with Jackson Harglow (Charleton Heston, I did mention this script attracted a rather star studded cast, right?  David Warner is in this thing, too), Kane's publisher and is hired to track Kane down.  The trick is, Kane is supposedly in a town that only exists in his books.  Yea, waddafuh?  But ok, a tough case, they are paying him a lot, and with the weird starting already, Trent smells just a big ol' con with imaginations running free.  He teams up with book company editor Linda Styles and goes on a road trip to find this town and to find Kane.

Then things get really weird.

This is a pretty amazing story, with classic cosmic horror about our assumed reality teetering at the edge of something cosmic, inhuman and indifferent to our well being.  In fact, in this case, this whatever seems to take some kind of pleasure, some kind of "nourishment" in our suffering.  It demands a gateway.  It is even darker, though, in the sense that in most of Lovecraft's stories, the human investigators are plucky heroes hopelessly outclassed against the menaces they face, endangering their bodies, minds and very souls.  But still, they struggle on, achieving a nobility in their willingness to fight this fight.  And though it might well be temporary, their fight does matter.  There is virtue to be found in banding together and confronting this menace. In this story, said virtue is not quite as clear.  Trent is a skilled investigator, and even brave and tough.  But he is purely a pragmatist and not particularly motivated by compassion.  At first, he is just a hired gun, and later, his motivation grows into his determination to find an explanation for the madness and darkness beginning to manifest about him.  In fact, his pragmatism renders him the perfect example of the barrier that can't bend, and it's inflexibility means that he is probably destined to break.

The world breaks before he does, but that is probably not a favor for him.

Bleak, don't watch if you are depressed.  But if you are looking for an ultra dark spin on Lovecraftian atmosphere, watch this.  Watch it with a friend, though.

Mythic Journeys: All Stories Are Our Stories...

I love stories.  T'is true.  In all mediums.  Take me on a journey, give me something of a talisman to insert myself personally and take me through a tiny, or if you are really good, a tremendous transformation and make me something more on the other side.  At the very least entertain the helloutta me. 

There is one thing I am certain of after all this time, halfway through five decades on this mortal coil, we are each a story.  We are all combined a huge story.  And our stories that we tell aren't just ideas expressed on a medium.  They speak to truths inside us.  Our greatest stories, the ones that stick to us long after the last page, last note or the credits have rolled.  The ones that never leave us and find new fans long after their original origin date, those stories speak to something eternal in each one of us.  Something that sings to us.  We recognize this.  And that story in turn accepts us and allows us to take it in as a part of us, adding more color and character in our group of notes in the great song.

Sounds highfallutin', doesn't it?  Perhaps a bit far fetched?  Well, that is what Mythic Journeys is all about.  Through both a story told with the celebrity voices of Mark Hamil, Tim Curry, Lance Henrickson and stop motion puppets and various commentators talking about the subject of storytelling and myths, the point is driven home of the need for stories.  The general consensus is that modern culture has driven most into kind of a sleep state.  A routine.  A pattern.  You wake.  You get roughly the same breakfast and amount of coffee.  You go to work and do the same job.  You see the same people.  You get out of there roughly the same time.  You go back to the same house and see the same people.  And repeat.  The documentary makes the point that most of us have been driven into a sleep and even a kind of near death with such a state.  We remain so unless we take a more active interest in our lives and a desire to engage with the sublime truths that are waiting at the corner of our eyes.

Basically, the film is a call to recognize this idea, to engage these higher truths and to recognize our stories anew as a call to do this.  Our stories are a roadmap of inspiration, to lead us all on our own journeys of discovery to figure out these things and to have a great adventure and maybe even to change the world.

At the very least, it is a very cool idea.

Check it out.

Ginger Snaps: Was Never A High School Girl...

...myself, so that might be the problem.

Yes, I was a high school outcast.  But I never obsessed about death.  I wasn't poised on the edge of menstruation.  And my home life was actually pretty good.  So...this film that seems to be well regarded just didn't do it for me. 

There aren't that many good werewolf movies out there, honestly.  Compared to vampires, our furry friends get relatively few films.  Even less good ones.  I'm not ready to call this film "bad".  It was well shot, despite the obvious low budget.  The cast, though filled with unknowns and lesser knowns(minus the delectable Mimi Rogers, quite surprised to see her there) did a fine job.  But...nope. 

The scenario is this.  Two girls, Ginger and Brigette, obsess about death and dying and apparently carry a suicide pact with them and have from age eight.  Each day, they are bored by their classes, nauseated by hormonal high school boys, shunned by their fellow female students.  With their choice of morbid art topics, they confound their teachers.  And their disdain and disrespect frustrate their parents, or at least their mother (Rogers) because their Dad seems pretty checked out.

At some point, a lycanthropy curse kicks in, with obvious metaphorical ties with teenage changes, menstruation and rage, we get a canine killing spree.

But...yeah.  Heathers, with Christian Slater and Wynona Ryder, seemed to deal with similar angst.  Now, I had some issues when I was a youngster.  But I don't get this fascination with youngsters in a downward spiral.  At least for me, to generate relatability with this story, it needs to be through the eyes of a contrasting more...balanced perspective. 

Young and tragic kinda leaves me cold.

As did this.

Splice-Just...no...no sex with my "daughter", no matter how creepy...

Ever watch a movie one time and say, "Yeah, this was good," then watch it again and you have an abrupt turnaround on opinion?  It can happen.  Perhaps you are at a different place in your life that frames the film differently.  Or maybe you just notice things you didn't notice before that rubbed you wrong. 

Me...I guess I just get icked out by viscera combined with quasi-incest. 

This film is directed by Vincenzo Natali, who directs some fine relatively low budget science fiction, including Nothing and the simply incredible film Cube, which has to be one of the most effective films in being a class on how to use a single, simple set.  This one, Splice, with a much bigger budget and many more locations, not to mention a much bigger name cast (Adrian Brody) as well as Natali's stable standby David Hewlett (Stargate's Rodney McKay) put forth this story.  And let us not forget the admittedly amazing Delphine Chaneac as the sinister and tragic creature, Dren.

The idea is a biotech company has two brilliant scientists working for it to create engineered creatures who can produce lifesaving breakthrough medicines for it.  The company is on the raging edge, technology wise, but hanging on by its fingernails financially.  The company isn't yet turning a profit and where it is in development, is in fact hemoraging cash.  The investors expect a turnaround.  Hewlett plays William Barlow, the representative suit whose job it is to represent the corporate voice EXPECTING RESULTS.  And when Clive Nicoli (Brody) and Elsa Cast (Sarah Polley) screw it up with their first critter, this put their side project in a starker light.

The side project would be Dren, a lab grown hybrid of many fathers, including human DNA.  This puts the film right on the cutting, controversial edge of where biotech is nowadays.  The film could have been a cutting commentary on it.  But they kind of lost it when they wandered into the nature/nurture argument about what makes a man/woman.  Again, a more deft script could have handled it and turned in a more interesting, though provoking story.  But they decided not to go that route, making Brody's character ultimately a weak person pulled hither and yon by his weaker and more emotional drives. 

Including porking his quasi-human daughter.

The film seemed pulled and pushed different ways for "effects", without the narrative undergirding to go along with it as a full fledged story about human scientists out on the frontier. 

Not so obvious on the first run through.  Glaringly so on the second.

Transformers: Age of Extinction-Michael Bay has just one plot. The rest is set decoration...

Michael Bay does a few things really, really well.  He blows things up.  He worships the well formed female body (he also can showcase dudes, too).  He loves hardware.  And he likes to do a bit of flagwaving. 

And that's the essence of a Michael Bay film, the rest is just details.  Really, that's all there is to it.  With the Transformers variation, the key difference is giant alien robots that mostly transform into, again, big pieces of hardware, which Michael Bay loves to smash together with lots of noise and explosions.  And again, there is no doubt he is a master of metal porn.  Problem is, well, everything else.

I don't think Bay saw M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, which featured Mark Wahlberg as a science teacher.  Not picking on Mr. Wahlberg, as he is capable of some deep acting when properly directed and when provided with a matching script.  But, for example, his role as Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights tapes into a certain elemental mail archetype, the stud turned porn star, which I think Wahlberg can naturally tap into with his inclinations.  But science/logic types?  Mark Wahlberg, buying you as an engineer, even the more artistic, intuitively driven type, that is just out of your range, by my estimation.

But here he is as Cade Yeager, a struggling inventor.  He also has a daughter and a race car driver boyfriend...but that just sets up empty, non-clever and somewhat patronizing banter (re. his daughter) and a bit of macho posturing which quickly gets dull.

The story is about the REAL cause of the end of the dinosaurs, which involves the Transformers somehow (bad enough the "false history" of the Moon landings, now this) and from there, we eventually get an introduction of the Dinobots, which seems ironically almost an afterthought, given the premise of the film.  And...they don't talk.  They just break stuff.  Kind of pointless, since we have that all covered.

If this series is going to go on, we need some ideas.  I'm pretty certain Michael Bay has run out of his.