Slumdog — for the dissent

The acting is certainly engaging, the score enchanting, and the plot and theme valid, if expected.  These alone should comprise a movie that earned plenty of viewers and box office dollars, which, of course, is the case.

And I can see exactly how and why the various juries named it the Best Picture.

For me, the film pleases in the general areas mentioned. Who doesn’t like a rags-to-riches tale?  But Jamal doesn’t win through his own intelligence or skill or even determination. He isn’t that interested in winning the money. He thinks the beloved might be watching because she was watching that one time.

Also clever is the opening epigraphical multiple choice Q&A about why events are about to unfold as they do.

“How did he do it? A) He cheated. B) He’s lucky. C) He’s a genius. D) It is written.”

My problem is personal and aesthetic and probably not shared by anybody else. The gruesomeness is emotionally and visually unpleasant if not in spots unbearable. Let’s see, there’s torture by beating, electric shock, children’s eyes being removed so that they become more convincing (and profitable) beggars, forced prostitution. 

The depictions of very realistic (I assume) dismal, abject poverty are something I don’t like to see at any price while I munch my popcorn as if it means nothing (the representation of reality) and is provided for my entertainment. Slumdog is not a documentary. Kids rolling in their post-diahrreal excrement, digging through garbage heaps, squalid living as in washing clothes and dishes in filthy canal waters with hundreds of others. Lots of non-athletic sweat. Not for me. Someone said that I needed a good dose of reality — it’s good for us to expand our horizons. Call me shallow, but I have plenty of imagination that suffices minus disturbing visuals.

It’s probably not going to spoil it for anyone if I say that the outcome is the desired one.  Through much adversity, boy gets girl — the childhood sweetheart, no less — and they kiss and dance off the stage. AND they are filthy rich, no pun intended, their problems solved, their suffering erased. Because “it is written.” It’s conventional and naive following the film’s pervasive negativity, but this is melodrama. Somebody’s watching over Jamal.

 

An excellent, graded review http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/reviews/multiple-choice-review-slumdog-millionaire.php

Not your Dad’s western: Appaloosa

Westerns like High Noon or The Magnificent Seven  feature a good guy(s) who rescues the weak, craven Townspeople, who are being victimized by a villain of some sort: The Dalton Gang. Barely concealing his contempt for the good citizens’ cowardice, he displays serious skill with his rifle and six shooter plus great dexterity with hand to hand work and swiftly cleans up the town.  As a bonus he gets the girl — the only pretty one (who doesn’t work the cattle drives) in town.

But Appaloosa! I went for the cast plus I enjoy a good western:  Tombstone, 3:10 to Yuma. Ed Harris, Jeremy Irons, Vigo Mortenson, and Renee Zelweigger, are all A-list actors, and they play their parts well.

It’s the script.  Harris and Mortenson’s characters have a history of rescuing towns together; they know each other well and complement each other’s abilities. Harris is short on judgment, though quick to act, and Mortenson is more thoughtful and supportive. But Harris appears dull-witted and slow of speech, constantly calling on his buddy for help with word selection and pronunciation.  What slow-paced, sparse dialogue there is develops the theme of friendship and trust the two men have built over time. When Zelweigger asks Harris “Are you going to believe him over me?” Harris answers in typical monosyllabic style, “Yep.”  (Mortenson has about six words total.)

Harris shows especially poor judgment when the dubious widow Mrs. French (Zelweigger) arrives via stage coach well-dressed and fresh-faced. She attempts to seduce both sheriffs (separately) not to mention a hired gun of Irons’s. Next comes the bad guy, Irons, who, reprieved for murder by his friend Chester Arthur,  buys the saloon, and consequently is the new top coyote, financially speaking.

Friendship is one thing, but at the end of the movie, Mortenson shoots and kills Irons. Perhaps he needed killing, but the motivation isn’t justice. He does it so Zelweigger will go back to Harris. Mortenson immedicately rides off into the sunset for the same reason. 

But there are no heroes. Nothing worthy of imitation. More like applauding rat killing. Unless we believe that leaving town so that your best friend’s girl will have one less man to choose from models script-worthy behavior. We don’t get the sense that this non-dynamic duo cares all that much about the morality of their work -it’s what they do. Man’s — got — to — eat.

In High Noon Gary Cooper’s sheriff is reluctant to kill. He struggles, but he will do the right thing because it’s the right thing AND his job. That is abundantly clear. But then High Noon wasn’t a post-modern psychological western.

And forget the pale, devoted, newly-wed young wife (Grace Kelly.) Zelweigger tells us that she is insecure — always needing money and desperate for security. That’s why she courts the man who offers these, working her way up the town’s feduciary ladder.  We understand. It’s not her fault. In the older westerns, there were saloon girls, but we didn’t have to analyze why they did what they did. And empathize.

And traditional Western heroes weren’t anti-heroes living with dark corners or existential dread. Their values, like their loyalties, were clear. And good. The leading man wasn’t depicted as rugged but slow either.

Vote for me!

Kevin Costner, among my top ten actors, is starring in Swing Vote, a film that appeals on many levels. Based on the previews, my expectations were low.

Pleasant surprise! Entertaining from the beginning, it’s one of those films to which audiences demonstrably relate, the subject we love to hate being politics. But there’s much more.

Creating historical precedent, the presidential election hangs on a single citizen’s vote. Bud (Kostner) is a soon to be umemployed, underachieving egg factory worker who lives with his preteen daughter in adverse conditions. But he isn’t concerned — about anything. Molly, overly responsible for her age, takes care of Dad, nagging and urging civic behavior upon this beer swigging, woefully uninformed father.

Both presidential candidates court him in a parody of the lengths — or depths — a politician will sink to for a win. During a visit to Air Force One, to which Bud drives Richard Petty’s Dodge, the incumbent president, also the conservative, Kelsey Grammer, serves beer and employs THE football in an analogy of football and politics. They play poker, just two good old boys hanging out.

Dennis Hopper, the left, the greener party condidate, instantly becomes pro-life after learning that Bud might not like abortion. He throws a party featuring chipped beef appetizers — like Bud’s Mom used to make — and Bud’s old band, “pulling a few strings” to get them out of prison.

Bud has no political position — he lives for the next six pack — but reporters drag half opinions from him and the race is on to fuel each candidate’s show of agreement. Politics as carnival — the biggest clowns the candidates.

Neither campaign manager has a problem with an instant 180 shifting of their man’s stand on the issues to get Bud’s vote. They are the film’s bad guys.

But redemption comes to the others. The candidates emerge with consciences, and the reporter, who has betrayed Molly’s confidence, gives her the tape. Bud, who has received bags of mail from citizens with real needs, has an awakening, and before he moderates a debate, in an ill-fitting cheap suit, delivers a guilt-stricken monologue that drew tears from most.

Finally, at his humble voting station Bud approaches the booth in which his vote will determine the election.  Molly, who has been the instigating factor in Bud’s alteration all along, tries to follow him in. With a smile, he stops her and dramatically and proudly, I think, pulls the curtain. In this counrty voting is a very private thing. They both get it.

And we don’t know how he voted. (One viewer at the Monaco shouted “That sucks!) But that’s not the point. A voter finally understands the freedom and weighty responsibility that he has in the right to vote, not in ignorance, but informed. We know that the country will ultimately win.

Particularly refreshing is the fact that neither current political party’s view are favored. And while “it’s not that simple,” this process of ours, the film provides a clean, entertaining reminder about areas that have gone amuck in the system and the posibility of their correction. Good timing.

A very dark knight indeed

In fact, this Batman film is too dark to allow enough light in for a minute’s respite from the string of murders, both random and planned, the psychotic ramblings masquerading as philosophy, and the lack of any redemptive hope for mankind, Gotham City.

I did not enjoy this film, and it isn’t the genre. I saw Iron Man three times.  Rah! RDJ was intelligent, witty, capable, and fun. Heroic. Of course we wouldn’t expect any good superhero to be glib and entertaining with the Joker on the loose, but he might have done his morose, auto-alienated scenes with some sort of flair. They are flat.

We get a smile or two from Micahel Caine, who never fails to impress just by showing up. But Gyllenhall has no spark of life to share and supplies no relief from the gloom. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhert) is believable as the D.A., but he twists toward the dark side in the end. Naturally.

And Heath Ledger? A great sicko. Very murderous and pathetic and obscenely grotesque beyond the weird of Nicholson.  I know he’s the villain and a psycho. But he’s too over the top for entertainment at the PG-13 mark for what used to be a comic book crook styled for juveniles. Maybe that’s the point.

I also know that Batman the Dark Knight is breaking all records and has garnered mostly favorable revuews.  So a lot of people like this stuff, I guess.  It’s not why I go to the movies.

Indiana Jones 4 — I hate to say it

I wrote this review 2 hours ago and deleted it. It felt cruel. But several searches were made for it, so here it is again. Look, the film was fine. It met all expectations for any Speilberg/Lucas work — the Russians could have been wearing stormtrooper whites or Nazi khakis, but otherwise everything was there for a fine film of this genre.

It was too sketchy though. Aliens, mad Russians, freakish jungle natives served as linking agents and props for the giant ants, spider webs, quicksand, and decaying corpses. It was a lot to track.

I’m stalling.

Actually my objection and failure to be thoroughly pleased with the film has to do with age. Sorry. Film is a visual art and that’s about — seeing. I hesitate to use the phrase “eye candy” but that says it. Harrison Ford looks old in  the film. His acting is pretty much the same quality, let me be quick to say. And Marion, love interest from the first film, got older over the past three decades, too. What a pair hugging over their mystery son (not a fan here either) she had without Dr. Jones’s knowledge.

Hello?! It’s natural. Happens to the best of us.

I KNOW. It’s materialistic. It’s shallow. It’s superficial.

It’s reality.

Acting and modeling are short-lived occupations. Thankfully there are creative careers wherein one can age and no one will know. Studio artists or something in radio, say.

Or blogging. You don’t even have to use your real photo.

Believing Prince Caspian

As I’ve said before, I’m not a reader nor fan of fantasy preferring MY fiction to be rooted in reality. 

Hmmm . . .

Allegory, like the Narnia series,  majors on plot: it’s a representative fiction with the story employing symbolic events and characters along the way.  Prince Caspian, like the others, is specifically and unabashedly Christian — it’s all there — good v. evil, moral struggles, choices, human strength and weakness, Divine superiority with intervention and rescue.

Lewis believed in the importance of imagination and its part in believing the truth of Christianity. After all, as a faith there are some issues that do require, well, faith. Is there a cosmic struggle between good and evil? Is the end predetermined? Who are the players? Who wins? Why? Does Good triumph as events on earth and beyond play out?  Why do bad things happen? Why good?  Will God arrive on the scene at a designated time to right all wrongs and avenge his name defeating his emenes and fully redeeming mankind?

Some kind of faith is needed for all that. I’ve not seen “proof” beyond the metaphysical. And still . . . reason to believe. That’s what kept coming to me as I watched this film tonight. With ugly inter- and intra-kingdom battles and power struggles, murder and deception, violence and hatred in a dark world that has forgotten the “faith of its fathers,” represented by ruins and kingless, beseiged doubting creatures, there are true warriors -believers, the English wardrobe children, previously weighed and found worthy. They unite with Prince Caspian, who has what it takes, goodness, faith, character, courage, and proves himself able to lead the Narnians when the children return to England and Aslan is not physically present. 

I don’t care for fantasy. (Christianity is fantastic in some ways, but not fantasy. ) I couldn’t finish the Chronicles though I appreciate Lewis’s work. The film for me serves as an enjoyable reminder that, in Emily Dickinson’s words

“This world is not conclusion
A sequel stands beyond
Invisible as music
But positive as sound.” 

and in Shakespeare’s (Hamlet):

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Fantastic but not fantasy.

This is not a textbook review, so here are the Disney offical site with video and the review from today’s NYT.

Also, this week I picked up a DVD of “Beyond Narnia,”  a dramatization of C. S. Lewis’s life and transition from atheist to Christian. It’s good (cheap) background for children (or adults) reading the series, plus it was shot on location in Oxford, England.

Iron Man exceeds expectations

My date tonight, my husband, read comic books as a kid, so we’ve seen all the super hero movies. Most have been so-so — except for Batman and I think that was because of the actors: Keaton, Clooney, Bale — about what I expected from a comic book-based production.

But Iron Man tops them all with quippy, clever dialogue and a smart hero. We like this man, played by Robert Downey Jr., because he has everything James Bond has: looks, elegance, wit, mechanical dexterity, and a general irreverence but is also equipped with a billionaire’s bank account. He has inherited his father’s weapons business. And business has been good. So good that Tony Stark is kidnapped, nearly killed, and almost forced to manufacture a devasting “Jericho” missile system for the enemy.

He escapes, of course, using his own resourcefulness and inadvertently creates the Iron Man suit — a powerful weapon that does anything one would need in battle; it even flies. Another result of being a captive of militant Middle Easterners is Stark’s development of a conscience over how Dad made all that money in the arms biz, though this might not be noticed by young viewers. I got worried that we were headed for a p.c. round of anti-war propaganda, but it was subtle and well-executed. Stark sees the boxes of weapons bearing his name being used for subjugating innocent people, and this epiphany gives him pause.

Stark, a technical genius with amazing gadgets and gear, revamps the company intending to create something to stop evil. It is ironic that the something ends up being another powerful weapon — himself in the Iron Man suit– and its creation and final product are fun and impressive, even for non-techies.

Downey is just the right blend of playboy with a conscience and bright, gifted can-do hero. His relationship with Pepper Potts, Gweneth Paltrow, is subtle but based on mutual respect and care. She is brainy, but vulnerable. He treats her as a favored employee with an only hinted at attraction. 

Background music from the counter melody of “Iron Man”  plays when Stark does something heroic. The familiar score comes in only after a final news conference where Slater announces that he is, in fact , the Iron Man that has been causing disaster, this after being instructed by the military to “follow the script” that denies all knowledge of anything. At the Monaco more than a few clapped and cheered.

The film is too violent in the first hour for viewers under twelve or so though our theater had many children younger than that present.

Dead is worse than “Expelled”

Ben Stein’s documentary now showing in theaters had a timely opening with election upon us. The first segment of the film is Stein’s interviews of several professors who lost their positions with distinguished universities. Incompetent? Immoral? No, they all made the fatal error of examining ID, Intelligent design, as a possible explanation for the origin of the universe. This on campuses where claims of academic freedom are made, often embossed in stone and heralded in mission statements.

Stein effectively draws an analogy between the supression of ideas such as ID and Nazi Germany, crematoriums, and goose-stepping. Several shots of the Berlin Wall, before and after, are included, also symbolic of the fear of competing ideas in the marketplace.  The grim reminders that we’ve all seen before — the emaciated POW’s, the bones piled high, the gas showers — inspired my blog title. Loss of a job can be bad. But dead because of ideas that one is willing to allow into the discussion, upheld or not, is worse.  Several interviewees clearly did not want to allow ID and the possiblilty of a God onto the “freedom” table. This is America last time I looked.

Stein and others make the connection from Darwinism to ideaologies like Hitler’s and Sanger’s. If natural selection is followed to its logical end, eugenics makes sense. Good breeding is good for humanity. Why protect the weak, the disabled, the sick, the elderly, or the unborn, who may all be drains on society’s resources?  In fairness, the argument is made that right after the quotation from Darwin on the weak and imbecile, he advocates the protection of such people, thus making Stein’s quotation out of context.

The film’s structure is somewhat choppy, but easy to follow. Interspersed throughout the first section are black and white clips of kids being bullied and such.  Images grow more distressing as they include the all-familiar death camps and patrol guards.  In the middle these images and dialogue are outlined in old filmstrip style, the main points concerning how a Darwinist would best secure his message. According to Stein he’d enlist education, the media, and the government. Examples are provided.

Finally, Stein meets with whom he calls the foremost Darwinist of our day, Dr. Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion.) Dawkins has reportedly been angered by the interview on film. It does make him look less than trustworthy when he says that life could not have been created by God, but another type of intelligence might have done it– perhaps an ALIEN being.

My own stand is with those who favor intelligent design: I believe in the Bibllical God. That said, I want the best inquiry that science offers. I want to know what Charles Darwin did and said that set the world on its ear. I will not dismiss nor deny the Holocaust. I want to know why there was a big gash of concrete running through Berlin. I may be misinformed at times, but within my scope I’ll search out the truth. Most importantly, I don’t look to science for proofs of what I believe through faith (and a certain amount of personal objective and subjective experience.) It won’t matter to me if science “proves” that there is no God. They’re too late.

Clooney as Clooney in “Leatherheads”

George Clooney plays the same character in most of his movies — clever, witty, charming, down on his luck, but able to improvise, adapt, and overcome. Best are the familiar sideways glances, double takes, and double entendres. He makes us like him. He’s the only part of the film that made it worth seeing late yesterday.

 The main plot line concerns the development of pro football in the 1920’s. Dodge (Clooney) is an aging player and team leader who is alarmed over the number of teams folding for lack of a fan base (money.) But if he can get a WAR HERO, “The Bullet,” played by Jim from “The Office,” who is a college star athlete, he can save the team through the publicity. It works even though they end up on opposite teams.

The subplot is that of a newspaper’s plan to discredit the war hero, who apparently has been exaggerrating about his stint in the Argonne. Renee Zellwiger plays the journalist who will befriend The Bullet, bring him down, and get herself promoted.  She overplays the “I’m not the housewife type” attempting to be a Girl Friday like Rosalind Russell, but goes overboard with squints, cigarettes, and wise-cracks.

But so what? We don’t care. We’re more interested in watching Clooney act and in the love triangle of the two men and Zellwiger.  We don’t care that much about the fate of football either, though there are some good scenes of mudball and trick plays.

If you see the film expecting The Office’s Jim to be the character who is so popular on the series, you’ll be disappointed. He is as good as the role will allow, but minus a “Pam,” he lacks sparkle and simpatico.  An inebriated local reporter and a coach who only appears once or twice on the field fail to interest, too.

The film is clean — not much offensive beyond some unnecessary (as usual) profanity — and moderately entertaining with scattered humorous lines. But one thing that happens is a phenomenon that I’m seeing more and more lately: a comedy digresses into sentimentality or social issues. This has the effect of a downer on the audience. Clooney, who also directed the film, should have kept up the humor throughout as he did in Oh, Brother. The lying war hero angle isn’t funny.

21 — and counting!

 spoiler warning

Counting cards. I’d never heard of “counting cards,” hayseed that I am. Not exactly illegal, it’s a mathematical way to beat the house at cards based on probability and a heck of a good memory. The film 21 opened Friday night to a full house if it was like our Monaco tonight (Saturday.) We had assigned seats.

A brilliant 4.o MIT student’s life dream is Harvard Med. He lacks two things: money ($300,000 all in) and “dazzle.” The prof interviewing him for the scholarship is impressed, but alas, he has 76 more with the same glittering resume.  “You must dazzle me,” and jump off the page, he tells him. Ben is a plain, geeky boy, very nice. (He turns down his lower-middle class Mom’s offer of $68,000.)

Enter the villain. Kevin Spacey is the math prof, who leads a talented group of students to Vegas on weekend jaunts to make money at 21 – Black Jack. Prof Mickey Rosa invites Ben to join. Ben goes against conscience in favor of MONEY and quickly becomes great at counting cards, achieving the pinnacle of success: to be a HIGH ROLLER IN VEGAS. (Statistically, not many people dream of Harvard Med.)

Toadies and sycophants aplenty court him. He likes it too well, forsaking a beloved project and his best friends.  But he’s 21. And stupid to be so smart. He hides hundreds of thousands of dollars above a ceiling tile, breaches one of the professor’s rules, and gets caught by casino security, Lawrence Fishburne, who beats him up and threatens his life if he ever sees him gambling again.  Then, the dubiously gifted professor steals Ben’s MONEY, gives him an incomplete, and fires him. His future is toast.

So Ben has learned his lesson, right? The movie is a cautionary tale, a morality play: greed is the root of all evil. Crime doesn’t pay. Honesty is the best  . . . not really.  The last cut shows Ben and his two best friends (sweet, nerdy MIT boys) and Ben’s co-counting girlfriend winning at the tables. He’s recruited them! No more baggy sweats — Armani suits all around.

But before that a flashback shows Ben making a deal with the casino cops to turn over Rosa through an elaborate set-up in the casino. This is how he saves himself. Not very heroic either. Rosa was the one that turned Ben in, too. Add to that, Fishburne double crosses Ben and takes the set-up MONEY, which was to finally secure Ben’s tuition.

The reward, or rather payoff? Ben now has a resume; he can dazzle, and his new life experiences jump off the page. It was worth it!

Based on a nonfiction book, Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrick, the film is entertaining, fast-paced, and well-acted despite mostly poor reviews that I read including from the NYT. But its themes are unsatisfying because the message is mixed. They certainly show the corruptibility of youth, the evils associated with greed, AND that the house can be beaten enabling you to finance your Harvard degree while living the Vegas life! At the very least you’ll build an estimable resume. And your friends need not be left behind. They, too, can be winners. If they’re smart enough.