Arranged may be a chick flick. It’s hard for me to say for sure because, alas, I am not a chick. Its story is quite simple: two new female teachers in New York City are assigned right out of college to teach in the same public school and they become friends. This hardly sounds like much of a plot for a movie. However, one happens to be an orthodox Muslim and the other an orthodox Jew. Moreover, they must work with each other. Oh, the horrors!
In the hands of a different director, this could be turned into a slapstick comedy, but instead this story is told in a straightforward manner. Nashira (Francis Benhamou) is so orthodox a Muslim that she wears a hijab in public. She has to handle a class of elementary students full of such diversity that the teachers refer to the school as a little U.N. She is quickly forced to interact with Rochel (Zoe Lister Jones), an orthodox Jew. Rochel is a special education teacher and her student participates in some of Nashira’s classes. Both approach each other warily, but a student quickly presses the obvious issue. Don’t Arabs hate Jews and visa versa? Both women have hardly spoken a dozen words to each other and suddenly in front of the class they have to confront their ethnic and religious divide.
Nashira only takes her hijab off at home. Home includes Mom and Dad, who are obsessed with matching her up with a proper Muslim man in an arranged marriage. Rochel doesn’t have to wear a veil, but also has to deal with her own set of orthodox Jewish parents, also obsessed with her getting married, but even more so that Nashira’s parents. Both Nashira and Rochel quickly discover that because they are being pushed into arranged marriages and come from orthodox households that they have plenty in common. Rochel rebels being matched. Nashira is intrigued. Both risk being ostracized if they do not agree to an arranged marriage.
While they wrestle through their first year of teaching, they also have to figure out how to work with each other and handle the large number of arranged suitors coming to their doors. This quickly give both two women something in common. Almost unwillingly, they find they like each other. The same cannot be said of their parents. Rochel’s mother is aghast when she brings Nashira home to work on a joint assignment. Nashira’s parents are equally wary of her new friendship with Rochel.
Rochel’s quickly begins to resent her yenta and finds herself yearning for the freedom of her older cousin, who had the audacity to break away and live a life free of her Jewish trappings. However, some exposure to her cousin’s life soon makes her realize she is uncomfortable with her level of freedom. Yet none of her arranged suitors suit her in the least; in fact each one seems worse than the last one. Nashira’s experience is much better. Her parents soon introduce her to a man who takes her fancy and she begins making her wedding plans.
It is a story that is perhaps a bit too contrived and predictable, but both actresses are unusually convincing in what would otherwise be stereotypical roles. Moreover, it is nice to see an orthodox Muslim woman and an orthodox Jewish woman break free of their ethnic stereotypes, if only on screen. They discover that their common humanity is a stronger force than their obsessive orthodox upbringing. Yet, both take some comfort in the traditions as well.
In short, Arranged is a simple film destined to tell a simple story that is a bit uncomfortable at times, a tad melodramatic and sometimes lightly funny. By design it never quite soars. It would be unfair to call it a B movie because it is hardly mediocre. Rather it is a heartfelt and well-acted story of an unlikely but enduring friendship.
Does that make it a chick flick? Maybe. Lacking guns, violence, nudity or swear words it may appear to be inoffensive, but to the many of us who grow up in orthodox families can relate easily enough. So it is definitely more than a B movie, but has few of the qualities of an A movie either. I give it a B+ for sure, or a 3.1 on my four point scale. If you have the opportunity to see it, you should but it is not special enough to seek out. While not as much fun as movies that revel in ethnicity like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, many of us will still find the movie touching.
When you are convalescing and your domain does not extend much past your driveway because you cannot drive a car, you eventually end up watching DVDs and online movies. So here are some mini-reviews of movies I have seen while holed up.
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain (1995)
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain certainly is an odd movie that is supposedly factual. It takes place in the fictional Welsh village of Ffynnon Garw, which is based on the actual Welsh village of Taff’s Well. There is a mountain just outside the village, or is it just a hill? Everyone assumes it is a mountain and boasts about their mountain (“The first mountain in Wales”) until during the First World War, two Englishmen come by to survey it for the government. One is Reginald Anson, played by the devilishly handsome Hugh Grant. Apparently, the RAF needs to know to make sure their planes don’t fly into it. The distinction between a hill and a mountain is apparently whether it exceeds one thousand feet. The village is crestfallen to discover that their mountain is sixteen feet below a thousand feet. Their village pride drives them to extremes, so they begin a major landscaping project to bring sod up the hill and make it big enough to qualify as a mountain.
There are a number of memorable characters in the movie, including Morgan “the Goat” (Colm Meaney). While the men are away at war spends his time bedding most of their wives. There is also the Rev. Robert Jones (Kenneth Griffith), the revered village vicar who feels called by God to make the village hill a mountain. Anson and his colleague end up boarding in a room at the tavern, and meet up with Betty (Tara Fitzgerald), whose job it becomes to distract the men while the villagers try to turn the hill into a mountain. In the process, the country girl Betty and city boy Reginald fall in love. Overall this is a gentle movie that feels quintessentially British, although really it is quintessentially Welsh. For a movie, its premise does not sound marketable but it is at least unique. Overall, it is likeable enough movie, worthy of a rental if you enjoy gentle romantic movies. As a light romance, it hovers somewhere between a B and an A. So I give it a 3.1 out of four stars.
The Last Detail (1973)
I remembered seeing The Last Detailwhen it first came out but it obviously did not make much of an impression because all these years later I decided to watch it again. It might have been my first R rated movie, which, if true, meant I passed myself off for seventeen. The movie has only three characters of note, all enlisted U.S. sailors: Billy Buddusky (Jack Nicholson), Mule Mulhall (an African American, played by Otis Young) and Seaman Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid). Billy and Mule have a temporary detail to haul Meadows to a naval prison in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Their journey by bus and train from the naval station in Norfolk takes them through many of the cities in the northeast.
Nicholson only plays one kind of character, so Buddusky is the smart-ass world-wise sailor. He feels sorry for Meadows, who was sentenced to eight years for trying to steal from the commander’s charity fund. Meadows is hopelessly naïve if not stupid, and is also a virgin. Buddusky convinces Mule to make their trip north a long one to make sure Meadows has a good time and gets laid before being locked in the clink for eight years. An unpretentious and gritty movie, it looks like it was not directed at all. Mainly the movie feels like a movie wherein Nicholson gets to do what he does best: be kind of oily and repulsive. As you might expect, Nicholson chews up the scenery, leaving the other actors more like bit players than supporting actors.
Their adventures include a New York whorehouse, observing some sort of vaguely Buddhist chanting ceremony and a wasted trip to the house of Meadow’s mother in lovely Camden, New Jersey. Although in color the movie feels like it is in black and white as it is typically murky outside. Moreover, the scenery in the bus depots and train stations are as ugly as these three sailors. Overall, I wished I had not seen the movie again and should have realized I had purged it from my brain for a reason. Frankly, it’s not that good and I’m surprised IMDB.com viewers give it 7.5 stars. Perhaps this is the sort of movie only enlisted people can appreciate. If you have to see it, take the time to find the late Gilda Radner as an extra in one of the scenes. This was before Saturday Night Live and she was an unknown. Otherwise, avoid. My rating: 2.5 out of four stars.
The Answer Man (Arlen Faber) (2009)
I generally enjoy a light romance so figured The Answer Man would pleasantly kill ninety minutes or so. While certainly not a bad romance, it’s not a good one either, principally because of Arlen Faber (Jeff Daniels) is a character not unlike Billy Buddusky, and is hard to love. The movie must have been renamed because IMDB shows the name as Arlen Faber. Perhaps it was renamed because the movie did so poorly in the box office.
Faber is a thoroughly annoying author who twenty years ago wrote a book where he reputedly had conversations with God. It sold millions of copies but turned him into a recluse. He hides in an attractive row house in Philadelphia. About his only contact with the outside world is his agent Terry (Nora Dunn), who is trying to get him to appear on the 20th anniversary of the publication of his book. In fact, Faber never had conversations with God. He made them up, and when he truly needed conversations with God because his Dad was dying of Alzheimer’s disease, the big guy stayed silent.
Shortly after the movie starts, his back gives out. He ends up (literally) crawling down the street and into Elizabeth’s (Lauren Graham) newly opened spine clinic. He immediately is enchanted with Elizabeth. Arlen’s only hobby seems to be trying to get rid of copies of his many books. He tries to give them away to a young twenty-something bookseller named Kris (Lou Taylor Pucci). Kris is recently out of rehab and is back living with his drunken father. He tries to manage the bookstore but it is failing and it looks like he will lose the store. The three sort of come together because they all have Arlen in common. Elizabeth and Arlen sort of fall in love, then sort of fall out of love, and Kris’s father dies suddenly. Arlen tries to be a father figure to Elizabeth’s boy. It’s all way too predictable. As much as I tried to imagine that Elizabeth and Arlen might fall for each other, I just couldn’t make the connection.
The movie is mildly amusing but truly nothing special as romance movies go and five times easier to figure out than the typical light romance, which means the movie is very shallow. You don’t need to avoid The Answer Man but there is no particular reason to seek it out either. If looking for a light romance, pick something else off the shelf. 2.8 out of four stars.
How bad can a movie be in the 21st century? It can be so bad that you, who probably never tried to write or direct anything, can make something better than the 2004 direct to video “movie” Suburban Sasquatch.
With a movie this bad it is hard to know if it was made intentionally bad or whether the auteur behind the film Dave Wascavage may have honestly thought he had a gift for writing and directing horror movies. I think I can safely say that Hollywood will not be calling Dave Wascavage. One thing is for sure: the movie has Dave’s fingerprints all over it. It is full of various friends of Dave, none of whom are actors. It is also full of Dave’s relatives, including his grandmother. Dave is also in his own movie in at least two roles, one as a fisherman who ends up on his backside in a creek and later on wearing a ridiculous blond wig that I suspect he borrowed from grandma. It is written, produced, directed and has very “special” effects by Dave Wascavage. Seriously the scroll at the end has Dave’s name in most of the credits. Suburban Sasquatch is something bordering on genius on how to create a myopic, intensely bad “film”. In short, if you are a bad movie buff, you had better try to get it. And yes, you can rent it from Netflix.
Wascavage is apparently vying to be the Edward D. Wood of 21st century auteur cinema. Wood, as dreadful as his films like Plan 9 from Outer Spaceand Glen or Glenda were, at least had some general sense of direction. For example, in any scene the director draws an imaginary line across the scene. The camera stays on one side of the line. This is to prevent the viewer from getting confused, for example, having person A on the left side of the frame in one shot and on the right side in another. Wascavage obviously never studied cinema, so he feels free to confuse the viewer. Naturally, Wascavage was also the cinematographer. So you end up with very unusual camera framings. For example, if a person were looking stage right, most cinematographers would frame the actor on the left. Wascavage though throws convention out the window and feels free in to put the person on the right side of the frame looking right while leaving a whole lot of nothing on the left of the frame.
Perhaps Wascavage was channeling director Phil Tucker who in 1953 released the turgid dreck Robot Monster on unsuspecting cinemagoers. In Robot Monster, we had a guy wearing a gorilla suit who was supposed to be an alien from outer space. You could tell from the space helmet on his head. In Suburban Sasquatch we have Sasquatch as a guy in a gorilla suit as well, except his mouth never moves. Sasquatch only says one thing, which sounds sort of like “roar” kind of garbled in a couple of changing pitches.
Wascavage did all of his own special effects so we get really crappy effects, such as of a car window being digitally shattered. His tightly edited sequences, such as you can see in the video insert, demonstrate that even the most basic aspects of directing are blithely ignored. As Sasquatch unexpectedly assaults a car, we see sequences of the car both moving and the car standing still.
The blood and guts effects in the movie are hilariously awful. They are so fake that not even a preschooler would be fooled. Sasquatch is really good at ripping off people’s limbs. When he rips off a guys arm, it is painfully obvious the real arm is stuffed under the guy’s coat. The limbs clearly come off a mannequin. You can tell from the pins in the socket joints.
As for the acting, there is none, of course. Sue Lynn Sanchez as the Indian Talla at least sounds sincere and speaks coherently. Dialog is rambling, frequently improvised and rarely makes much sense. There are times when the actors seem to be reading from an off camera script. As for plot, well, apparently Sasquatch decides to terrorize areas in suburban Pennsylvania where Wascavage lives because that’s what he does, except it is not the least bit terrorizing. Moreover, this Sasquatch can fade between visible and invisible. Bullets seem to have no effect on him. It takes the brave Indian woman Talla, wearing a short skirt and living, not in a teepee, but in a cheap tent from Wal-Mart in someone’s back yard, to hunt down Sasquatch with her spear and magic helmet, er, sorry, wrong cartoon, her bow and arrow, that looks like it was bought from Toys R Us.
The plot comes with an intrepid reporter who is constantly berated by his editor. It also includes a sheriff who moved to Pennsylvania to escape a Sasquatch that had been terrorizing his old neighborhood. Who could make this up? It makes absolutely no sense, but nothing about this movie makes any sense. It is laughingly bad in every respect, but perhaps it reaches its nadir with the dialog, which is rambling and rarely makes much in the way of sense.
This is essentially a movie made by a guy using any relative, friend and casual acquaintance he can con into “acting” for the price of a few beers. To call it amateur is to praise it. I have seen amateur movies and amateur theater and sometimes amateur can be good, or at least have good spots. (The Blair Witch Project comes to mind.) Nothing about this movie is commendable.
Like Craigslist Casual Encounters, it is a complete waste of time. However, it is instructive into just how badly some piece of crap like this can be made. It fails spectacularly on every single level.
I am really hoping this was made to be a bad movie. If so, Wascavage is a genius, but it feels too authentic to be a deliberately made “bad” movie. Watch the extras on the DVD and see Dave’s grandmother explain her role. It sure sounds like it was done with some pretense that it might ascend from the gutter. If only it were good enough for the gutter. This “movie” really rests in the sewer.
If you are a fan of bad movies like we are, you should definitely see it. If you are looking for an excuse to get drunk and laugh, Suburban Sasquatch will do the trick. Otherwise, anything you can do will be a better use of your time, and this includes picking your nose.
My thanks to my nephew Ryan for introducing me to Suburban Sasquatch. It appears that there is a genetic predisposition for bad movies in my family that has been passed down to the latest generation.
Usually big budget special effects intensive movies leave me unimpressed. I am happy to say that was not the case with James Cameron’s hugely expensive movie Avatar, now playing everywhere. Moreover, for a change I can say that the public agrees with me, to the tune of more than a billion dollars in revenue so far worldwide and doubtless much more to come.
While certainly not a perfect movie, Avatar is an amazing wonder of state of the art special effects married with a world (Pandora) so biodiverse and culturally rich that it has the depth of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. To achieve it, James Cameron spent much of the last decade imagining Pandora and spending gobs of money to hire all sorts of artists, linguists, anthropologists and other scientists to render a wholly plausible alternative world. He then had to merge this all together with a good script and great talent to make it actually work on the screen. The result is a tour de force, an accomplishment that if it does not get Cameron Best Director at the Academy Awards will be a travesty.
Weta, the company that did the special effects for TheLord of the Rings movies, has had ten years to perfect computer-generated imagery. The ten years were well spent. Avatar is the first movie where I can honestly say the result is so richly realized that I can no longer tell CGI from live action. You will see none of the digital jerkiness you saw ten years ago when Gollum was rendered for The Lord of the Rings. If you can afford to spend a few hundreds of millions of dollars on CGI for a movie, you can render a world that exists only in a computer and still make it wholly plausible. What is amazing is that Cameron manages to pull off not just a technical triumph, but he also manages to integrate all the live action elements into a compelling and well-acted story.
You have to get to the end of the movie (or to have read the reviews) to name the flaws in this movie. To some the long battle sequences at the end of the movie will seem tedious. The real flaw (and certainly not a fatal one) is that the characters have little depth. This is because this is essentially the noble savage story, which has been retold many times. This is the white man landing in the New World and finding the natives offensive because they are not like them and don’t particularly want to play nice. Not to give too much away but at least in Avatar it quickly becomes clear that the humans (for the most part) are the savages, bent on destroying a rich, highly integrated world in the pursuit of some highly prized mineral. Pandora is really Gaia, the mythical world that is one giant living organism. (In reality, the Earth is also Gaia, it is just that most of us refuse to see it or believe it.)
So you get super muscled characters like Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) to whom the native extra-tall, blue-tinted and human-like creatures of the woods (the Na’vi) will always be brutes. Even if they are not, he does not care and has no problem destroying anyone who gets in his way. You also get Sigourney Weaver as Doctor Grace Augustine, a legendary expert on the Na’vi and Na’vi sympathizer. Naturally, she quickly butts heads with Colonel Quaritch. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is sent to Pandora to attempt to become trusted by the Na’vi and to be Quaritch’s mole. He does this by living in a simulator where he directs his avatar remotely. In this case, an avatar is a cloned Na’vi that Jake directs from his simulator. The simulator is really more of an interface and it is so good that he effectively becomes his clone. Jake learns all about the subtle ways of the Na’vi and their complex culture. He is soon befriended and coached by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana, a.k.a. Lieutenant Uhura from the recently released Star Trek movie). And you guessed it: Jake soon begins to bond with the Na’vi, falls in love with Neytiri and in time turns against his own race. He begins what looks like an impossible quest to save both the Na’vi and Pandora from his own species, which will stop at nothing to get at Pandora’s minerals.
It turns out that though the plot is shallow, it really doesn’t matter because the acting is good enough, the story engaging enough, the world is so richly detailed and the CGI is so amazing. It could have been a better movie with a wee bit more time and attention to the plot and characterization but in a project this massive, I guess something had to give.
I recently reviewed Up in the Air and said I expected Avatar to be not quite as good. Trying to compare the two is like comparing apples and oranges. Both are well acted and well directed. However, the movies each serve different kinds of audiences. Up in the Air is the more human of movies and is certainly better acted and has a more thoughtful and engaging story. Nevertheless, by leaps and bounds Avatar is the better-imagined movie and is so visually rich and dense that even with its minor flaws it turns out to be marginally better.
If you haven’t seen Avatar, you should. This is one of those movies where you really should pay extra to see it in 3D, as it actually adds something to the film. The characters may be largely stereotypes, but it fully engages you and should leave you feeling breathless.
Great job. Mr. Cameron. You may not win the gold for Avatar, but you definitely deserve the silver. Thanks for making one of the few extremely expensive movies where not only did I feel that I got my money’s worth, but where I should have left a hefty tip.
Some part of me understands the world of Ryan Bingham, the jet-setting businessman portrayed in the movie Up in the Air by George Clooney. Ryan spends most of his life either in the air or inhabiting the cozy little world of frequent flier clubs. Many of us have opportunities for business travel. My half dozen or so trips a year more than scratch the itch to roam. In fact, it does not take many trips before one American city seems pretty much like all the others. Bingham spends all but 46 days a year on the road. He has mastered frequent flier clubs and is boldly working toward reaching American Airlines Ten Million Mile Frequent Flier Club, a very exclusive club with only six previous members. Hotel and airport life have become his home. It is only when he returns to his rarely used apartment in Omaha that he feels uncomfortable. He yearns for 35,000 feet, airport tarmac and the chance to add more frequent flier miles.
That part of his job is bliss. Less so is his actual work. He is hired to fire people. Its what his company does and in a depressed economy, he has never had more work. He has firing down to a science and has become largely inured to the devastation he inflicts on people he does not know. Come 5 p.m. he tunes it all out. If this is the price he has to pay to live a detached life, he is happy to do so. In the process, he has nearly disconnected himself from any meaningful relationships. The sole exception is his sister Kara, who nags him to take pictures of places he visits as a present to her daughter and her fiancé who are about to get married.
Two karmic forces will rock Ryan’s serene world on the road. One is an attractive late thirty something woman Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) who he meets in an airport bar and who spends nearly as much time on traveling as he does. They instantly click and work through their complex travel plans to find time to intersect, trade their war stories and make love. The other is a young woman who recently joined Ryan’s firm, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick). She has convinced the CEO that their business could be much more profitable if the firing process could be done remotely using videoconference technology. This causes a breach in Ryan’s comfy world on the road. So he takes Natalie on the road with him so she can learn for herself why her idea will not work.
Given the dehumanizing work that Ryan does, it is not surprising that nonstop business travel works so well for him. It allows him to detach from virtually all relationships. His family is whomever he meets on the road. In spite of himself, he finds himself increasingly drawn toward Alex. While he preaches the virtue of detached relationships, almost unwillingly he finds himself wanting to spend more time with Alex than their frantic schedules will allow. After all, how can he resist when Alex tells him, “Think of me as you with a vagina.”
Clooney is at the top of his form in this movie and glides through the subtleties of his role with what appears to be a reflexive adroitness. For a long time it is hard to know whether to admire or revile Ryan Bingham. He understands that life and relationships are complicated, and has no interest or patience for dealing with the many permutations that come with relationships like marriage. After a while, we understand that he is paying a price for living a detached life. When Alex arrives in his life, he slowly begins to understand that there is value in having a partner in life, although it takes until the very end of the movie for him to truly understand the karmic lesson life will dish out at him.
Up in the Air is something of a parable for our 21st century information age and the pitfalls that are inherent in the virtualized and ephemeral relationships many inhabit these days. Reputedly, this movie will be one of the Best Picture nominees. I personally do not think it merits the award, but the movie is clearly topical, interesting and engaging at least for those of us who do any amount of regular business travel. It is also at times funny and touching. If it has particular virtues, it is that it depends on acting rather than fancy special effects to deliver its value. I have yet to see Avatar, but I suspect this one will be the better movie.
For your amusement, here are a few mini-reviews of movies and shows I have seen recently.
The Men Who Stare at Goats
If you put George Clooney, Ewan McGreggor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey in the same movie will it necessarily be funny? To me this was the existential question of The Men Who Stare at Goats. Funny is as funny does, and this movie does have its funny moments. However, this is no Borat or Brüno. Its humor is far subtler. Whether you will find it humorous or not depends in large part on whether you think its premise is humorous.
Its premise is that during the 1970s the U.S. military, afraid that the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War in the new psychic operations battlefield, decided to invest some time and money of its own to create a set of New Age psychic warriors. The movie does have some loose basis in fact. Jim Channon, a Lieutenant Colonel who served in Vietnam proposed a First Earth Battalion to the Pentagon. This new force would win the hearts and minds of the enemy by using tactics like positive vibrations and sparkly eyes. In real life, this did not get much beyond a Pentagon sponsored mailing list. In the movie, George Clooney plays Lyn Cassady, the most gifted of this allegedly defunct Special Forces unit. Among his talents is that he can stare at a goat with such intensity that it will keel over dead.
Ann Arbor Daily Telegram reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGreggor) runs into Cassady in the country of Jordon, who he soon associates with a crazy man he interviewed back in Michigan who told him about this Special Force. Before you know it, both he and Cassady are venturing into Iraq. Cassady apparently is on special assignment. Cassady uses his dubious psychological skills to outwit a few kidnappers, but they end up lost in the desert eventually, only to discover that a psychic corps is already out there. However, this group was contracted out, like much of our War in Iraq. The movie comes complete with lots of flashbacks where we meet the corps legendary founder Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), who is clearly playing Jim Channon.
The movie is strange but just plausible enough to suspend disbelief. It’s not a bad way to spend 94 minutes in a theater. It will keep your attention as well as keep you mildly amused. Ultimately, it tries too hard to make a movie out of a premise that has little humor in it. The main reason to see the movie is to see Clooney, McGreggor, Bridges and Spacey interact on screen and do their best with this thin material. I found myself chuckling at times but this is not one of those movies where you are on the floor laughing. It is probably worth renting but is nothing overly special. It is clearly aimed at the Catch-22 crowd. I give it a modest 2.8 points on my 4-point scale.
Paper Clips (2004)
I did not know what to expect of this documentary, but since it was on my sister’s Netflix list and she liked it, I added it to mine. Whitwell, Tennessee is the unlikely location for a story about understanding the Holocaust. Two teachers were looking for a project for students at the Whitwell middle school that would help them understand the magnitude of the Holocaust. Whitwell is one of these mostly lily white towns in the middle of Appalachia, and seemingly not fertile territory for empathizing with the plight of the Jews or learning about discrimination in general.
To help the students understand the magnitude of the Holocaust, the teachers start the students on a project to collect six million paperclips, one for every Jew killed in the Holocaust. The students start writing various people and organizations looking for donations of paperclips. At first, the paperclips trickle in, and then become a torrent. Each contribution is counted and meticulously cataloged. Soon, rooms are bulging with paperclips and the press is starting to pay attention.
The students make friends with actual Holocaust victims, who come to share their story. Over several years, succeeding classes of middle schoolers continue the project. Eventually the school receives an authentic boxcar that was used to transport Jews to concentration camps. It is turned into a memorial and filled, of course, with paperclips. You can visit the mini memorial today if life takes you through Whitwell, Tennessee.
The documentary succeeds in helping students insulated from the ugliness of much of the world understand the prejudice and discrimination inflicted on different people far removed from them. They open bridges into a wider world that they would otherwise not come in contact with. If the documentary has a flaw, it is that despite its premise it is not particularly engaging. It could have done with a lot less saccharine music. Still, it is an unusual story and worthy of capturing. If I were teaching in middle school it would be required viewing by my students
I’ll leave it unrated. If you feel you need a lesson in empathy, it is worth seeing.
The Music Man at The Kennedy Center
When you go to hear a musical in concert, particularly with a pops orchestra, you should not set your expectations too high. Last Friday, we took my father (age 83) to The Kennedy Center to hear the music from the musical The Music Man performed live by the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marvin Hamlisch. The Music Man is his favorite musical. Growing up we often heard the sound track to The Music Man during our languid Sunday mornings.
What we got was a greatly abbreviated version of The Music Man, partially staged in front of the orchestra. Shirley Jones, who played Marian the Librarian in the 1962 movie, was part of the cast. At 75, Ms. Jones is way too old to play Marian, and arguably way too old to play Mrs. Paroo, Marian’s mother. Actually, Rebecca Luker who sang and performed Marian’s part is also too old to play Marian, who is supposed to be 26. (Ms. Luker is 48.) It didn’t really matter though. Luker was terrific in the part, and made me wish I had seen her perform the full musical on Broadway back in 2000. Patrick Cassidy, the son of Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy, played Professor Harold Hill. He also directed the performance. Cassidy’s performance was not particularly noteworthy, but nothing for which he should feel ashamed.
The Washington Post found little to like about the concert except for Ms. Luker. The Post misses the point. The point of the concert was for us to hear Ms. Luker, enjoy an afternoon with the NSO Pops, check out Shirley Jones (who is aging very gracefully) and have a good time during a busy holiday weekend. I certainly had no expectations that I would be seeing anything of Broadway quality, which is why it was so nice to have Ms. Luker doing such an excellent job both singing and acting in the part. It was also nice to be four rows from both performers on a blustery November afternoon. After the performance, both Shirley Jones and Patrick Cassidy shared a few intimacies with the audience. Ms. Jones was pregnant with Patrick when The Music Man was being filmed. During the final intimate scene at the footbridge, Robert Preston felt Patrick kick and exclaimed, “What was that!” Twenty years later, Patrick related that he finally got a chance to meet Robert Preston. “Without missing a beat,” he said, “Mr. Preston said, ‘We already met.’”
The real treat for me was simply to see my father dabbing his eyes during the performance. It is hard to touch someone’s heart but on this one rare occasion, I fully succeeded. I am glad I was there to enjoy these moments with the best father a son could ever want.
Some months back I mentioned in my review of Coraline that seeing the movie in 3D did not any value. I recently finished Journey to the Center of the Earth in plain old 2D. After finishing the movie, I realized that seeing it in 3D would actually improve it.
Unfortunately, the reason Journey to the Center of the Earth is a better movie in 3D is because it made such a mediocre 2D movie. Moreover, after seeing it in 2D it becomes clear that because of all the obvious effects that in 3D it might cause you to lose your lunch the movie is meant to be seen in only in 3D. In 2D, you just realize just how full of nothing this movie actually is.
Blessedly, the movie clocks in at only 93 minutes, so you won’t have to sit in your seat too long. Still, the movie is about 33 minutes longer than it needs to be. It is clear from the plot at exactly whom this movie is targeted: boys on the cusp of pubescence. This is clear not only from the shallow plot and predictable special effects, but by the presence of child actor Josh Hutcherson, who plays Sean Anderson, a 13-year old boy. Sean spends his days lost in his handheld computer. His life gets considerably more interesting shortly after his mother drops him off at his Uncle Trevor’s house. Here is another sign that this is not going to be any A List movie: Uncle Trevor is played by famed B-movie actor Brendan Fraser, probably best known for his many Mummy movies. Fortunately, Fraser gets to sleepwalk through this movie. In this movie, he plays a vulcanologist, rather than Rick O’Connell of the French Foreign Legion. He might as well be O’Connell of the 21st century, because he is playing a similar character.
It seems Sean’s father disappeared underground a decade ago and is presumed dead. What a coincidence; Sean father was a vulcanologist too, and Trevor is the younger brother following in his footsteps. In any event, Trevor inherits a box of his brother’s belongings and in it is the Jules Verne novel with scrawlings around the margins by his late brother. Curiously, at the very same time his nephew is visiting, seismic activities are happening that mirror those that occurred when his brother disappeared, so he and Sean are soon hopping Iceland Air to Iceland. There they quickly encounter Hannah (Anita Briem), who offers to take them into Iceland’s mountains so they can do some pressure measurements.
Briem is the best thing about this movie, such as it is, as she is great eye candy and her character Hannah has a mild acerbic sense of humor. Naturally they are hardly astride the mountain when a thunderstorm appears, they rush into a cave, and find themselves trapped in the cave. The only way out appears to be down.
Not to worry, Hannah has supplies. You might think it would take a long time to get to the center of the earth but fall down the right lava tube (which they quickly do) and you can get there in no time. Oddly, it has normal gravity. Sure enough, everything they encounter down there is right out of Verne’s novel! Apparently, it was all real and Verne was simply writing it down. Moreover, they find signs of Trevor’s brother down there. Could he still be living?
I would like to say they encounter everything in the novel, but there is not time for the whole novel. There is time for parts of it, including giant mushrooms, luminous blue underground CGI-animated birds, and a voyage on an underground sea where they are attacked by vicious CGI sea serpents and huge piranha-like fish. One thing is for sure: there is a lot of florescent material down there; you don’t need a flashlight. Just when you reach the point where you are feeling slightly engaged they find themselves in another lava tube ascending from the center of the earth and are deposited in Sicily, just like in the novel. Not to worry Sean’s mother. He is back in time before school restarts.
This is a film even the American Family Association can love. There is no swearing in the entire movie. The closest allusion to sex is that both Sean and Trevor claim dibs on the sexy Hannah. There is some slimy and mucous-like stuff in the movie that might have vaguely Freudian undertones. Mostly this movie is just mindless eye candy.
While pap and predictable, I cannot with honesty say it’s a bad movie, it’s just in no way a good movie. If you like Brendan Fraser, you will probably like his character here too, as it is more of the same. The humor is light but engaging. It feels like a made for TV movie instead of something you were supposed to see in a theater. Hence the need for 3D: to make you feel like you are getting something for your money. After all, the SyFy channel makes crap like this all the time, just with Grade C actors, no 3D and cheaper special effects. I hope that if you saw this in 3D you at least got a mild case of vertigo. You sure won’t get it in 2D.
Unless you enjoy spending ninety minutes ogling an attractive blonde woman, this movie is eminently skippable, so please do. My wife will watch anything with Brendan Fraser. Her fabulous company was my only motivation for seeing the movie. Fortunately, her company and running commentary were so good that I didn’t particular mind this waste of an hour and a half of my life.
I remember how nervous fans were when the first Harry Potter movie arrived in theaters in 2001. Could it possibly live up to the novel? Most people would agree that the first movie did not, although the movies seemed to improve as time went by. The first Harry Potter movie though tried hard to ensure fidelity to the book, perhaps obsessively so. It was thought that extreme fidelity was needed for the franchise to succeed, even at the cost of making a better movie.
Fidelity to the source also seems to be the approach taken by the producer and director of Watchmen. As a graphic novel, Watchmen developed something of a cult status among connoisseurs of the genre. Framed in an alternative reality, the graphic novel written by Alan Moore was groundbreaking when it was published as a limited-edition series in 1986 and 1987: adult, violent (perhaps obsessively so), and full of really interesting characters. In this alternative universe, starting around 1940, costumed vigilantes began appearing in America’s cities to address the lawlessness of the time. These included The Comedian, Doctor Manhattan, Ozymandias, the Silk Spectre (a woman) and a creepy hooded figure named Rorschach. Eventually they formed a loose federation.
The only genuine superhero among them was Doctor Manhattan who got his status from a bizarre nuclear accident. He became transformed into a true superman who among other things used his superpowers to win the Vietnam War, thus inalterably changing the timeline we know. Because of his success, President Richard Nixon becomes something amounting to a dictator who is seemingly bent on a nuclear war course with the Soviet Union.
Apparently, America eventually got tired of these hooded vigilantes. In 1977, President Nixon signed into law the Keene Act, which sent all but two of The Watchmen into retirement. Doctor Manhattan cannot undo his nuclear accident, and the U.S. national security depends on his hanging around. The ultra-creepy vigilante Rorschach simply refuses to stop. Ozymandias reveals himself as Adrian Veidt and becomes the world’s most successful billionaire. Veidt is seemingly bent on freeing the world from industrial oligarchies by providing cheap and abundant power available to all. Doctor Manhattan meanwhile inhabits a weird quantum world where he is increasingly unable to relate to ordinary human beings, although he has something like a love relationship with the daughter of Silk Spectre, Laurie.
Got all that? Fortunately, it is not hard to follow. The film begins with the grisly death of The Comedian, memorably played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. With his death, Rorschach (brilliantly played by Jackie Earle Haley) suspects that someone is out to kill all the Watchmen and in his own often lethal style goes out in search of answers. The year is 1985.
Like Harry Potter director Chris Columbus, Watchmen director Zack Snyder figures that closely adhering to the source material is good. Those who have the graphic novel can enjoy scenes that are copied frame-by-frame from the graphic novel. Snyder does deviate from the graphic novel in a few ways, primarily toward the end of the film. Overall, the film can be considered a faithful interpretation of the graphic novel.
Director Snyder hits it out of the ballpark with some characters but completely strikes out with others. Jackie Earle Haley’s portrayal of Rorschach is every bit as good Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker in The Dark Knight and serves as the movie’s central character. If you need a reason to see this often-grisly movie, make it to see Haley’s performance. Yet it is often hard to pay attention to Rorschach because the mask he wears, made to look like the famous inkblot test, is always in motion across his face. (The same problem occurred in the movie V for Vendetta.) Billy Crudup’s portrayal of the effervescent blue Dr. Manhattan is also well done. However there is so much CGI between the actor and his realization on screen that the acting is very filtered. Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl II/Dan Drieberg does a good job playing the role of the true gentleman among this boisterous crowd. Others, like Malin Akerman (Laurie Jupiter, a.k.a. Silk Spectre II) are obviously miscast.
Overall, the movie is well realized, but certain actors tend to throw it out of balance at times. Watchmen is also perhaps too grandiose in scope. Are we flawed and violent humans worthy of being saved? Don’t we deserve mutual nuclear annihilation? Do we really need one more movie where superheroes have to save the world from utter calamity? In some ways, the movie feels like a battle between gods from Greek mythology, in this case between Dr. Manhattan and Adrian Veidt over who is the more powerful, wise and clever. We humans seem to be pawns on their chessboard.
Frankly, the movie works better when it is down and gritty instead of high minded and cerebral. One cannot get enough of Rorschach, even though he is hard to stomach, because he is utterly riveting with every violent act he undertakes. Similarly, the Clark Kent-ish Night Owl and the perverse Comedian cannot help but draw your attention and fascination. I was much more engaged in flashbacks between Laurie’s mother and her husband than I was on Doctor Manhattan’s or Veidt’s philosophical ponderings. Moreover, although I had to squint through certain scenes because of the excessive violence, and I am no fan of violence in movies in general, the violent scenes at least made me feel alive and more engaged than scenes on Mars where Doctor Manhattan and Laurie ponder a world without the complexity of human relationships.
Overall, Watchmen is worth seeing for the memorable characters, but you may find yourself wanting to fast forward when it strays into the ethereal. If superheroes or alternative reality movies aren’t your thing, you can better invest your time elsewhere. Except for a few clunkers in the casting department, this faithful film noir is engaging and well executed. It will hold your attention.
Have you ever seen a film that was excellently directed, filled with fantastic actors and blessed with a great screenplay yet was still not very memorable? Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale is one of these movies. It is a really good movie but may leave you, like it left me, feeling “so what?”
John Dillinger, portrayed by Johnny Depp (perhaps America’s best actor), remains a well known name even more than seventy years after his death. He earned a reputation as America’s premier and most audacious bank robber. He also earned a margin of respect by some among the public by not also taking money from customers during his bank robberies. In 1933, bank robbers could often evade the law by escaping to a nearby state. The solution at that time was to make crimes where felons crossed state lines federal crimes. Unfortunately, in 1933, the FBI (known as “The Bureau of Investigations”) was a brand new organization directed by some untested newcomer called J. Edgar Hoover. As you probably know, during The Great Depression and the era of Prohibition, the nexus of crime in the United States was in Chicago, which was effectively ruled by brazen mobsters like Al Capone. Early in the movie we watch Director Hoover (played by Billy Crudup) send Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to Chicago. Purvis’ job is to succeed where others have failed by bringing John Dillinger, Public Enemy No. 1, to justice. It was a tall order and not for the faint of heart, because his investigators were likely to die in a barrage of bullets.
Bale must have been between Batman movies and Depp must have been between Pirates of the Caribbean Movies. All this is for the good because both actors are at the top of their form and it is fun to watch them act together. While they naturally get the most screen time, the whole supporting cast is excellent too and blend in forming a seamless whole. Marion Cotillard plays Dillinger’s girlfriend Billie Frenchette, a simple hat check girl whose life had thus far been pedestrian, but who cannot help but find herself drawn to Dillinger. The 1930s has probably not been so well realized on film since Paul Newman and Robert Redford starred in The Sting. The movie is truly a feast of great acting married with impeccably realized and historically accurate scenery. It is also, as you might expect, quite bloody. The gangsters’ gun of choice was a submachine gun, which was effective at wreaking butchery very quickly.
The movie follows Dillinger, his gang of associates and his girlfriend on chases that becomes ever more perilous for Dillinger as the feds slowly close in on him. There is lots of violence in this movie, but by current standards it is not particularly gruesome. There are no heads exploding or limbs butchered off, but lots and lots of bullets, dead or wounded people and houses torn up with gunshot. These scenes are all brilliantly captured. The movie is also interspersed with much period era music. Millions must have been spent on costume alone, given the many scenes with large numbers of extras. The directing and cinematography are first class, with many medium shots and steady cams helping to make you feel like you are part of the action.
Yet at its root this story is a one trick pony. Even if we forgot the history, we have a sense that Dillinger will be hunted down by the FBI and eventually meet a bloody end. We suspect that lots of people will die painful deaths before he is killed, and the movie amply justifies our suspicions. So we are left with a story which, at its essence, is about a headstrong John Dillinger finally being cornered by the determined and obsessed Melvin Purvis and his operatives and not much else. The only real suspense is whether Dillinger’s girlfriend will survive as well, given that the high mortality rate of anyone close to Dillinger.
So this film falls into the nebulous realm of “really good film” with no compelling reason to watch it other than to enjoy great acting and directing. If you are a Depp or Bale fan, you should not miss the film. However, if you are particularly choosy about movies that you see, there is probably something out there worthier of your time than Public Enemies. Given what is playing at the box office at the moment, Public Enemies is likely a top choice for adults.
3.4 on my 4 point scale. This is a film that manages to check all the checkboxes except perhaps the one that is most important: a film that leaves you more enriched and enlightened than when you entered into the theater.
Over twenty million men and women died in World War Two. There were also millions who escaped with their lives but who were left spiritually wounded. Few who lived in Europe were unaffected by the war. Among the victims were thousands of children who were separated from their parents for much of the war. In many ways they were the lucky ones, for many escaped into safer countries. Mother of Mine traces the story of one Finish boy, Eero Lahti, who was caught in the detritus of the war.
During the war, Finland was aligned with the Axis powers. Sweden, just across the Baltic Sea, was unaligned. It became a logical destination for young children like Eero to go for an extended “vacation” with a host family. While the idea sounded humane in theory, it was still wrenching in practice. It was more so in Eero’s case, because he lost his father to the war shortly before being sent to Sweden. His world, which had been wrapped around his father and his mother Kirsti, was suddenly bereft of both friends and family. Moreover, Eero arrived in Sweden, unable to speak a word of Swedish, and placed with a childless farm family. As if his world was not topsy turvy enough, he finds little but coldness from his foster mother Signe. The only person that seems to care at all for him is his foster father Hjalmar, whose Finnish is rudimentary and whose attentions are often elsewhere.
Eero is also an unusually sensitive boy for whom any change is unwelcome and who is easily frustrated. He dreams of returning home to his mother, and even starts constructing a raft to make the trip home, a foolish and perilous journey which when he attempt it nearly kills him. His unhappiness turns to despair when he reads a letter from his mother to his foster mother, saying she has met a man in Germany who she wants to marry. Kirsti wants the family to adopt Eero permanently. Meanwhile, through the wireless he hears reports that the Russians have invaded his country. Helsinki is in flames and there are thousands of civilian casualties. In short, his world is blown away and he feels trapped in a situation that seems shows no possibility of improving. Moreover, he is emotionally devastated to learn that his mother wants to give him up for permanent adoption.
I was a sensitive boy like Eero, so it wasn’t hard for me to relate to his trauma in this low key but very well made film. Topi Majaniemi is a gifted young actor who convincingly plays Eero in a part that would be challenging for any child his age. The roles in this movie are few, but the acting is uniformly excellent. Maria Lundqvist has perhaps the most demanding role as Eero’s foster mother. She portrays a complex woman whose antipathy for Eero is hard to understand, until it becomes clear that, like Eero, she too has suffered devastating personal losses. It is her decision to share her loss with Eero that eventually helps her feel affection for him. Yet no amount of affection can salve Eero’s mental wounds. That his mother does not want him back in her life after being such a nurturing presence is like a knife through his heart.
As you might expect, this movie comes with subtitles, but that should not dissuade you from spending ninety minutes or so in Eero’s poignant world. Not only is it convincingly acted, but it is also well staged and superbly directed. If your childhood, like mine, had periods of dysfunction, this movie will help you realize that your problems were probably trifles. And Eero’s problems, as heart wrenching as they were to him, were very small in the context of a much larger and uglier war.
Is Twitter a fad that is ending? I am seeing less tweets from those I follow, and I certainly put out fewer myself.06:29:53 PM March 08, 2010from Echofon
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