Category: reviews

With the recent 40 year anniversary of the first Apollo mission to the moon, I had an opportunity to read an account from the media-proclaimed “loneliest man since Adam”, Michael Collins. He was the astronaut who had to pilot the command module, and remained in orbit around the moon while Aldrin and Grissom landed on the surface and got all the glory.

Being farther from any humans than anyone before him, enclosed in a tiny capsule smaller than a walk-in closet, and out of even radio contact whenever he passed behind our planet’s satellite, you’d think he’d be feeling very isolated. Turns out, not so much.

I know from pre-flight questions that I will be described as a lonely man (”Not since Adam has any man experienced such loneliness”), and I guess that the TV commentators must be reveling in my solitude and deriving all sorts of phony philosophy from it, but I hope not. Far from feeling lonely or abandoned, I feel very much a part of what is taking place on the lunar surface. I know that I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity that I am perfectly satisfied with the one I have. This venture has been structured for three men, and I consider my third to be as necessary as either of the other two.¹

But still, to this day, the idea of space exploration being the loneliest pursuit persists in fiction and film.

Take, for example, “Moon”, Duncan Jones’ debut film. In it, we are introduced to Sam (played by Sam Rockwell). He has taken a 3-year contract with Lunar Industries to be the sole human worker at a helium-3 mining operation on the moon. He has a companion of sorts in GERTY, the computer that helps run the station. But that’s the only interaction he’s had for 3 long years; and let’s face it, GERTY’s empathetic words, when provided by Kevin Spacey’s sarcastic voice and illustrated by comical cartoon faces on GERTY’s one video display, aren’t much comfort. Sam is two weeks from the end of his contract.

Sam’s loneliness is assumed, and underscored by scenes showing him viewing videos from home of his wife; he’s not allowed two-way communication because of a faulty relay satellite that the company has not yet repaired. He’s shown doing his job of directing the giant mining robots. He’s shown running on a treadmill; an international symbol of solitude and drive. He burns his hand with hot coffee when he thinks he’s seen someone else, a brunette woman, in his lounge, a woman that, to my knowledge, does not appear again for the rest of the movie.

Then one day, when he’s out checking on one of the mobile mining machines, there’s an accident, a bad one. He wakes up in the infirmary, under the watchful eye of GERTY. Sam’s confused and slow to recover. And his burned hand is fine.

GERTY and the bosses back home seem unconcerned about Sam’s inability to work, and they send a rescue mission to repair the damaged mining machine, but Sam wants to go outside. He thinks something’s wrong, and after arguing with GERTY he finally manages to contrive a reason to go out via sabotage. Once out there, he finds something… extraordinary.

I’m loathe to give anything away, even though the trailers for this movie have given away this crucial plot point. If you are considering this movie, do yourself a favor and don’t see or read any more; just see it.

The cinematography of the lunar surface is stark and beautiful and reminds me (intentionally I’m sure) of the stark black and white videos sent back from the Apollo missions. The large mining machines look like nothing but Jawa Sandcrawlers crossed with farm vehicles. The station, all white panels and stainless steel cabinets and low ceilings, remind me of the interior of the Discovery from 2001 – and of course, GERTY is a grudgingly anthropomorphized HAL from that same movie.

There are probably plenty of other sci-fi inside jokes throughout the film, but that gives it a familiarity; it inhabits the mental space where many sci-fi movies have come and gone. But the story that’s being told is a subtle one, different from past summer blockbusters. It’s a story about identity and humanity. I know, I know, that sounds like bullshit psychoanalysis but I’m not going to give anything away, dammit!

The movie’s conclusion was both unsettling and utterly expected, and ended the movie but left me wanting to know more. What was the ultimate goal of Lunar Industries? Where did all this technology come from? What would happen to Sam?

We’ll never know. And that’s a brave stance for a filmmaker to take.

I recommend this movie.

¹
Quote taken from Andy Ihnatko’s transcription of Collins’ Carrying the Fire, under Fair Use.

There were so many times as I sat in the theater and watched John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph talk back and forth in character as Burt and Verona, when I wanted to turn to Lindsey and say, “That sounds just like us!” or “I can totally see us doing that.” or “I’ll bet that’s just like we would do.”

I should have seen Away We Go with Lindsey. But she was at home, doing laundry and cleaning up, taking her one day for herself in the week, and I was hiding from the heat of the day in a cool dark movie theater.

Burt and Verona are afraid they’re fuck-ups. They live in a broken-down house, have the kinds of jobs that don’t seem to require much interaction with anyone (he sells insurance to insurance companies, apparently by phone; she’s a freelance medical illustrator), and they’re expecting their first baby. They realize, on a deep level, that they need a support system to help them with raising their child; their first attempt at building one comes during dinner with Burt’s parents.

Burt’s parents, though (played with giddy selfish passion by Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) have decided to move to Amsterdam to follow some dream of theirs that they claim to have been putting off for a very long time. Their timing couldn’t be worse; they’re moving a month before the baby is due.

Verona’s fears are soothed by Burt’s optimism, and they decide to go on a road trip to visit various family members and old friends, to audition them for their role as the village they think it will take to raise their baby. The trip includes Arizona (Phoenix and Tuscon), Wisconsin, Montreal, and Florida, and we get to meet several different types of parents, most of them juuuuust outside of normal, which makes Burt and Verona seem normal by comparison, even though they aren’t.

OK, my description isn’t doing this movie justice. I just loved how Burt and Verona talked to each other, and I liked how they always seemed like real people; whether happy, or bored, or tired, or angry, they obviously loved each other very much. They wanted to make it work, and they feared they didn’t know how to make it all work.

Just like real people.

And holy crab; they’ve got some strange friends and family.

How did Pixar take an annoying little boy and a grumpy old man and make a wonderful, sweet movie?

Also, I will now always secretly wish that every dog had a speaking collar like Doug the Dog.

I got the groom to the wedding, after making sure he had the time of his life. The bride, of course, was pissed. And the groom and my friendship soon disintegrated.

That was both the first, and last, time I was in charge of a bachelor party. That was 15 years ago.

The evening included lesbians, binge drinking, strippers, gambling (and winning!), the phrase “A round of drinks on the house!”, taxicabs, the groom passing out and requiring first aid, many venue changes, and very little sleep.

It did not include traveling to another city, animals barnyard or exotic, surprise elopements, or criminal elements (that I’m aware of).

If the one I was in charge of is any indication, a bachelor party is a source of much material for stories written and filmed. Even a tame one, like the one I was in charge of, would, if filmed, make for much entertainment. And with just a bit of exaggeration, a truly epic movie could be made.

Like, say, “The Hangover”. The main characters in The Hangover start the movie in deep trouble. They’re out in the desert, scarred, scared, and in possession of a nearly-destroyed vintage Mercedes-Benz. Phil (Bradley Cooper, playing the charming live-for-the-moment member of the party) is calling the bride to tell her that, well, they lost Doug (Justin Bartha). The bride is livid; don’t they know that she is getting married in five hours?!

“Yeah,” Phil says, laconically if sympathetically. “That’s not gonna happen.”

And the movie then flashes back to show the lead-up to this grave situation.

The best part is, the movie doesn’t actually show the events in question. No, after some set-up, it jumps forward and leaves the men nothing but a handful of clues with which they are supposed to retrace their steps and find their friend; Phil is wearing a bracelet from a hospital; Stu (played by a hilarious Ed Helms), the normally co-dependent doctor dentist, has an ATM receipt from the Bellagio for Eight Thousand Dollars; there’s a live tiger in the suite’s bathroom, and a chicken wandering around the (literally) smoking remains of the hotel room; a mattress that they, somehow, recognize as belonging to the groom is impaled on a statue outside the hotel, as if flung from a great height; and Alan (Zach Galifianakis), the befuddled, mysterious, vaguely threatening brother of the bride, has discovered a baby in a closet (which produces almost no surprise, considering it’s not the first time he’s found a baby).

And the three men have literally no memory of the night.

Do the men learn a valuable lesson about male friendship and reach a place of peace with their choices in life? Who the hell cares? As the work their way backward in Las Vegas, the stakes continue to be raised and many, many laughs are had.

My one complaint about the movie is that the three female roles are not even sketches of real women; the anxious bride, the shrewish controlling girlfriend of Stu, and the stripper/escort Jade (the still-innocent Heather Graham), are barely there. I suppose that’s inevitable in a movie like this, which is more about the Hollywood myth of bromance than actual real-life relationships. For that matter, the male characters aren’t much more than a handful of quirks themselves. Charming quirks, though.

Wait… wonder whatever happened to the friend whose bachelor party I was responsible for? Did his shrewish wife force him to disavow me as a friend after we showed up, barely on time for the wedding, the groom so hungover he had to wear sunglasses inside? Whatever happened to his brother, the socially-awkward repressed kid? And why can’t I remember the names of the two lesbians who accompanied us that night, and what their relationship was to the rest of us? What happened to all the money I won at video poker?

Hmmm… either I’m a living stereotype, or Hollywood might just have something to tell us about ourselves, after all.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpOdCWaTsIk&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

Going to a movie is like dreaming in public. Images and sounds projected into a dark, curtained space; people whispering back and forth but mostly silent (if you’re lucky); faces turned all in the same direction, illuminated by the flickering light.

There are many ways to enjoy a movie. You can examine the philosophical points raised in it; you can let the pure visceral id experience of the action and images wash over you without delving too deeply; you can dissect it with the expert eye of a graphic artist or cinéast; Or you can view it as a writer, enjoying the plot and characters and how they interact. Or, of course, a little bit of some or all of those.

It may not surprise you that I primarily view movies as a writer. I love to pay attention not simply to what the plot points are, but in how they are told. How are the characters’ personalities and motivations explained to the audience? Does it depend on the dialogue and actions, or upon the actors’ craft? Do the choices that the characters make sense?

In other words, I love stories. I love telling them. I love paying attention to them.

The Brothers Bloom is a movie that is about a pair of con men brothers and the sequestered heiress that is their current target. It is also a love story, between one of the brothers and the heiress, just like many con movies before it; the question asked is the familiar, “Is he actually falling in love with her, or is it part of the con?” And it’s also, of course, a love story between the two brothers, who start out with the familiar tension found in paired confidence men; one of them loves the whole enterprise, and the other wants to get out.

The movie is also a philosophical treatise on free will vs. determinism, finding an answer to the question “Is it possible to live an unscripted life?”

But the writer/director, Rian Johnson, is far more inventive and lively than my simple description makes it sound. Bloom (Adrien Brody) is the younger brother, and I may have missed why the pair is collectively known by his name, and he is a lost soul, the deep thinker, the one who sees their life as nothing but lies. Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) is the older brother and he embraces his role in the pair as that of a writer, imbuing their con games with themes, dramatic arcs, and subtext. Their target for the movie is Penelope (Rachel Weisz), who is beautiful but more than a little socially awkward since she’s lived her entire life on a ridiculous estate somewhere in a magical New Jersey. In pursuit of the con, the three of them, along with Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi), their silent aid and explosives expert, travel to Montenegro, and Prague, and St. Petersberg; they travel by ship, and by train, and once by modern jetliner; part of the charm of the movie is its mix-and-match approach to technology and fashion.

I want to recap this movie, but honestly, it would be a dry and lifeless retelling. What I recall most are the small moments between the characters.

For example: Bloom saying goodbye to Penelope for the first time after she eagerly subverted the brothers’ script for introducing them to her. He stands outside the estate, mouthing the words of his script, and Penelope realizes that he’s leaving, after having given her a real (to her) honest conversation for the first time in forever. He reaches out to shake her hand while he speaks, and the camera cuts to a closeup that shows his thumb lightly rubbing her wrist and barely touching and reaching under the cuff of her sweater. Cut to her face, and a blush, as obviously an effect as the oft-parodied glint on a movie hero’s smile, paints her cheeks, and yet Weisz sells the look with her eyes.

Perhaps it’s because I am currently in the throes of love myself, but I felt that caress along with Bloom and Penelope. My life has seemed unscripted so often in the past, and it has left me wanting a better story, an honest story. I think I have found it, and it’s more than a bit shocking to see the emotional core on the screen of a downtown multiplex, told with idealism and humor but (there’s that word again) honesty, too.

This movie is fucking amazing.

[Note: Spoilers for “Star Trek” follow]

1. I have a huge totally straight man-crush on Karl Urban’s Dr. McCoy. Still.
2. Not only do the giant water tanks and transparent (transparent aluminum?) water tubes seem a bit incongruous on the new Enterprise, I think whoever designed and routed them needs some instruction in simplicity and efficiency. Was there some need, other than to make an entertaining action set-piece, for the tubes to run every which direction before terminating in a giant potentially-Scotty-killing turbine?
3. Getting a promotion in Starfleet seems super easy! Here are two possibilities:

   • Get recruited after losing a bar fight, cheat on your final exam, sneak onto a starship during a military engagement (twice), and get the acting captain (a Vulcan (OK, technically a half-Vulcan) to completely lose his shit and resign his commission. That gets you to Captain.
   • Abandon your ship to fly into a trap, get captured, tortured, and give up the defenses for Earth. That gets you all the way to Admiral!

4. On the other hand, defending your homeworld (unsuccessfully), shooting malcontent stowaways into space, giving out crew assignments on the basis of sexual favors, destroying random bridge consoles in fits of rage, and advocating against peaceful diplomacy and mercy – all that will only get you busted back to the second-most important position on a Starfleet vessel, while retaining your rank and commission.
5. Given Scotty’s propensity to test his crazy transporter theories on animals, perhaps he was using the tribble as a quickly reproducing test subject? Just feed it and you’ve got plenty of lifeforms to beam around!
6. Still love the casualness of the bad guy. “Hi, Christopher. I’m Nero.”
7. Are we sure this isn’t the mirror universe? I will not be surprised if Zachary Quinto grows a goatee for the sequel. Not surprised and at least a bit delighted.

I’ve been worried about Captain Kirk.

More specifically, I’ve been worried that Chris Pine, who was cast as a young James T. Kirk in the new Star Trek franchise reboot, just didn’t have the chops to make me believe he was a younger version of William Shatner’s cocky, swaggering, speechifying Captain Kirk. The promotional pictures, and the few million clips and trailers I’ve seen in the last several months, just did not go far enough to convince me.

Still, Zachary Quinto is physically about as close as someone could get to a young Leonard Nimoy, and Quinto’s portrayal of Sylar on NBC’s “Heroes” certainly shows he can play “emotionless”.

And, while I enjoy Simon Pegg’s past performances (particularly “Shaun of the Dead”), he really didn’t look like James “Scotty” Doohan at all. But I’d be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on pure personality alone.

The rest of the canonical bridge crew of the Enterprise everyone remembers was given to a bunch of young kids I’ve paid almost no attention to prior to finding out they were in this movie.

…except for the role of Dr. Leonard McCoy. Wait a minute, what? Eomer is playing Bones? How is that a good move?

I always knew I would see this movie when it came out. What I wasn’t sure of was whether I would buy it or not.

Or so I thought. This clip¹ totally sold me:

I’ve watched that clip many times prior to seeing the movie. And during the movie, after that scene, I turned to my girlfriend, Lindsey and said, basically, “Squeeee!“²

I saw the movie with a group of friends. Some I’ve known a long time, some I’ve known a shorter time. Some were fans of Star Trek and action movies; some were not. We drove out to the mall in which I spent much of my formative teenage and young adult life, so that we could see it in digital projection with awesome sound.

And we all enjoyed it, I think. The writers were faced with an enormous task; to take the mountains of backstory, some official and much of it unofficial but widely accepted by the fans, and still manage to make a movie that’s watchable, that covers a significant point in the characters’ lives, that doesn’t descend into boring pseudo-scientific Treknobabble that has marked some of the later excursions into the Star Trek universe.

Holy crab, did they succeed.

In fact, without going in to spoilers, they took the most basic tentpole of the Star Trek storytelling technique, a technique that’s been used in good Trek and bad Trek, and used it to refresh the characters and, almost literally, reboot the franchise. Yes, these are in fact James Kirk, Spock, McCoy.

No, you have no idea what’s going to happen next.

Congratulations to all involved. You did it. I love this movie.

¹ Sorry about the branded video clip. The non-branded one I found earlier has been pulled by Paramount’s sharks in suits lawyers.

² Luckily, Lindsey is awesome and did not hold my fanboy-ish joy against me at all.

Neil Gaiman, author of the book “Coraline”, has this to say on the subject of where to sit when watching a 3D movie:

“@lunarobverse for 3D movies you don’t normally want to be in the front couple of rows, and middle’s seems preferable.”

I have to admit, getting a direct answer from the author of the book that was translated into a movie to my question about where to sit has me feeling more than a little bit fanboy-ish.

I love the immediate feeling of connection I get from Twitter. I actually posted my question while waiting in the lobby prior to the movie, while the theater personnel were cleaning the theater, just 20 minutes before the movie was to start. I posted the question from my iPhone, on a whim. And had my answer in plenty of time to adjust where I was sitting to take full advantage of 3D during the film.

Even some of the previews were in 3D, and for the most part, it worked: the preview for “Monsters vs. Aliens” actually looked almost enjoyable from a technical standpoint, although I still suspect it lacks the depth of any random Pixar flick. Except, perhaps, for Pixar’s next flick, “Up”, which leaves me feeling underwhelmed. Really, Pixar? A movie about a grumpy old man who wants to get away from everyone? Of course, I’ll still go see it in the theater, but color me skeptical.

Oh, wait, this was supposed to be a review of “Corline” IN 3D. I got distracted by the special effects for a moment, and the tiny interaction with one of the films’ originators.

I have not read the book on which the movie is based, but the film was sufficiently creepy from the very start. Coraline is a little girl who feels neglected by her parents and alienated from her friends and hometown; the family has just moved to a rainy little place called Oregon, and her parents are always grumpy and nose-deep in their writing and computers. Little Coraline goes exploring and soon stumbles on a parallel world where her Other Mother and Other Father are happy, doting, and giving people who cultivate a garden that looks like Coraline and bake all her favorite foods and buy all her choices in clothes and do nothing but play games with her.

So of course the ones who spoil her and lavish attention on her are the bad guys.

Seeing the movie with adult eyes, I felt creeped out by all the attention the Other Mother and Other Father gave to the little girl. I wonder if any of that translated so well to the younger members of the audience. I would be surprised if it did not, though I have only my own instincts to go on.

I’m glad I got to see the movie in 3D; with only a couple of scenes near the beginning and during the end credits, the effect was used to simply give depth and perspective to the movie, and not to shock and reach out of the screen. The level of detail to the world was evident.

I recommend the movie. If you can see it in 3D, more the better – but hurry, because apparently the 3D screens are being slowly replaced with some Disney Jonas Brothers thing. Ugh.

Here’s what I knew about “The Reader” before I saw it Sunday:

• It has been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
• It stars Kate Winslet.
• It has some connection to the Holocaust.

All of those things are true.

The movie itself is somber, which is expected for a movie that has some connection to the Holocaust. But that is not the only theme. The script also deals with how normal people can be involved in the most heinous crimes, and how best for us to pass along the stories and lessons of the past, and the murky ethics of seducing teenagers, and whether one has a moral imperative to save someone who appears unwilling to be saved.

“The Reader” may join the list of movies that I enjoyed once, but never really wish to see again. It’s given me much to think about.