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.

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.

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.

“Of all the gin joints in all the cities in all the world . . . ”

Casablanca, which won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay for 1942, is a perennial in Top-Ten lists for movies. A personal favorite, the film offers patriotism, love (a trois),  wit, and friendship. The plot, the one-liners, the characters are all familiar. The cynical, suave, expatriated American, Rick (Bogart) claims to be politically neutral as the Nazis are advancing into Europe. He runs a nightclub and entertains and secures favors from the corrupt but likable French chief of police, Louis (Claude Rains) and lives with a broken heart.Rick’s soft underbelly is exposed when Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) enters the club with her on-the-lamb husband Victor Laszlo, under hot pursuit by the Nazis, Laszlo being an anti-Nazi Freedom Fighter. Rick and Ilsa had a torrid, but brief affair in Paris. Ilsa was married at the time but believed Victor to be dead. She sends a “Dear John” to Rick, who is literally left at the station.Ilsa’s betrayal, as Rick believes it to be, has led to his cynical outlook on life and caused his removal to the North African city. And then one day “of all the gin joints in all the world she walks into mine.”Many issues beg discussion, but the ending most of all. Rick and Ilsa are demonstrably still in love. Sparks noticeably fly. But something, perhaps he’s conscience-stricken in Laszlo’s presence, causes Rick to take the high road. He deceives Ilsa into believing that he has proper letters of transit and that they will run away together. Ilsa is for it. But on the foggy runway with propellers whirring, Rick reveals his true intentions: though claiming to be “no good at being noble” he makes Ilsa escape with her resistance-leader husband.

The restoration of the fact of her love in back in Paris as well as then and there (isn’t she willing to leave her husband?) has restored Rick’s faith in humanity. He’s ready to rejoin the fight; the cynicism fading as he walks into the fog with the previously maleable Louis, also restored as a patriot.

Evaluation? How about in 1942? Two men, each attractive in his own way, in love with the same woman. She loves her husband; she appreciates, admires, and respects him.  Ho hum. The affair with Rick was a love match — she can’t and won’t give him up.

She doesn’t get to decide.

Are we satisfied that Rick makes the decision for her in such a way as to preclude objections, Laszlo a few feet away, jet engines roaring? The consensus today would be stay with Rick. Follow your heart. Dump Laszlo. In a nice way. I suspect that the original audience of the forties would have understood better than we (world wars having a sobering effect,) and therefore would have applauded Rick’s choice for the greater good.

Either way, the film shows that in ideological wars and real, physical wars as in love, very little is fair. The battles between men and women — the hard choices and the attractions and betrayals are part of the human stage. Often, like Rick, we choose rightly and unselfishly.

This film has it all.  So for all generations, “Play it, Sam . . .” again and again and again.

Coen Brothers’ film depicts “No Country” for any of us

Wait. The ending. Did I miss it? Dead silence as credits start to roll on a black screen.  It can’t be over!

On this rainy Monday night, we tentatively ventured across town to see No Country for Old Men. Tentatively because it was rated R for violence, and well, we just had Thanksgiving and all. But is WAS the Coens, and the brief theater review promised some of their typically dark humor and excellence in cinematography and acting. Rolling Stone called it a “literate meditation.” Sold.

Not one who enjoys watching psychopathic killers at work, I was unable to watch even the first scene. And many others that followed. Violence? Ad nauseum. But the violence, as it turns out, is central to the message.

Good old boy, commoner, Vietnam vet, finds $2 mil in drug money at the scene of a desert rendezvous gone bad and naively believes he can keep it and his life. The story is that of a chilling assassin who is hired to get the money back. He coldly kills most of the innocent and not innocent people along the trail randomly and senselessly. With a pneumatic cattle gun. His bad beatle haircut, pale skin, and slouching demeanor hit the right strings for creating horror of a too real, too possible kind.

Who will stop him? Tommy Lee Jones (the main draw for me) is the sheriff of this early ’80’s West Texas arena. He is the wizened, smart, capable law man found in many an old western. Almost. He’s tired. He’s near the border, and he has seen one too many drug melees. He confides in a paraplegic former law man that he feels “outmatched.” A sheriff in another town where more related killings have occurred tells him, “You can’t stop what’s coming” after Jones remarks that he knew there was trouble when we stopped hearing “Yes, Mam,” and “No, Mam.”

So who then can help us (them)? It won’t be the Vietnam vet, whom we don’t exactly cheer for (keeping the money is illegal) but identify with as a potential hero type. The killer neatly dispatches the best assassin the drug brokers can find. The sheriff is too weak and too old and too tired. The citizens are easy prey, hayseeds.

The end. That’s all folks.

The point? More postmodern bleakness and existential despair. There are no heroes, and even those few with potential are ineffectual while “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” The best we have are just not equipped to handle the measure of resident evil. 

The world created by this film (based on the Cormac Mcarthy novel) is fiction. But really, how much of our literature and how many serious films incorporate this same theme? Surely this isn’t the main message of our time.

On Beowulf

Woody Allen once advised that no one take a course in which they “make you read Beowulf.” And yet, the oldest English epic has survived poor anthology commentary and still poorer readings and lectures. It’s not even about England! We hate it, but we feel that we must teach it because it’s, well, the oldest epic we have.  We owe it something.

And now it’s a movie. Trailers and previews point to a version probably darker and sexier (Angelina Jolie) than the poor Viking tale of heroics and tragedy. (Will we never run out of classics to obfuscate by making them palatable and marketable to the masses?) The extant written version has what are probably editorial comments added to the pagan tale by a Christian monk who wrote the story down in the 7th century for students forever.  The anonymous commentator takes the opportunity to teach about God, Cain and Abel, sin, heaven, hell and so on. It’s important historically since the pagan world was being assualted by Christianity, and the literature efffectively shows it. Does Hollywood include this significant data in its film?

What about the story? Our Scandinavian epic hero, Beowulf, must defend a set-upon kingdom with feats of strength. He first kills the half-human, half-monster Grendel. Then the avenging Mother of Grendel. Then a fire-breathing dragon. He does this with relative ease forsaken by the king’s tenderfoot soldiers.

That’s across the sea. Back at home, Beowulf is not as good a king as a warrior. Some men are like that. Things end badly for him. He turns out to be just a man, mortal. And the fates win again in this story that would certainly be ignored if it were not on all the good required reading lists.