And Some Other Stuff...

Movies, TV: Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Interview, Black Mirror

Readers, I promise I am getting around to my "Best of" list, but I still have a few items to review. Here's a little catch-up post with some movies and one excellent British TV series (very) briefly reviewed.


The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 1

Because I saw this movie, with its ridiculously unwieldy title, about a million years ago and don't remember much of it, I'm going to review it using haikus.

Revolution brews
JLaw is the Mockingjay
One film left til' done

Katniss is rescued
Pressed into being symbol
For revolution

They piss off Pres. Snow
He bombs the shit out of them
Still, they keep fighting

Peeta is brainwashed
Poor, poor Katniss Everdeen
Will this girl get laid?

Boom. Seriously, it took me 1/6 the time to write those than to attempt to explain the plot of this film.

B-

***

Guardians of the Galaxy

I'm not typically a fan of sci-fi action films based on comics, but even I couldn't deny the rip-roaring fun of Guardians of the Galaxy. It's got everything! An AWESOME soundtrack, Chris Pratt's abs (though to be honest, I like fat Chris Pratt more), a sarcastic raccoon, and GROOT.

I admit I had a somewhat difficult time following the plot, and the action sequences left my eyes glazed over. I have a lot of trouble with these kinds of films--movies where people have futuristic names like "Ronan the Accuser", and there's one person hunting another person but that person is hunting someone/something else, and there are magical stones that can destroy the universe. Bah. It's all pretty confusing given my brain's limited capacity for geek knowledge. But I had a very enjoyable time watching Guardians if only for the fast-flying wit and, let's be real, Chris Pratt (and his abs).

B

***

The Interview

When you compare it to last summer's pants-poopingly hilarious This is the End, this Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy is pretty weak sauce. But The Interview is destined to be remembered for a long time simply because of the Sony hack and brewhaha that followed. In case you've been living under a rock, some people calling themselves the "Guardians of Peace", aka GOP (an appropriately asshole acronym), hacked into Sony's computer infrastructure and really fucked up some shit. They released personal data, leaked sensitive emails, and wiped out entire servers. They also threatened a 9/11 type event if Sony released The Interview, a film in which Seth Rogen and James Franco assassinate Kim Jong-un. At first Sony decided not to release the film in theatres, and then they turned around and did release it in a few locations. But it doesn't matter because guess how long it took people who wanted to see the movie to find and watch the damn movie? About a millisecond because we live in 2015 and we haz internet. I guess the hackers forgot about that.

The Interview is pretty much what you'd expect from a Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy. It's intermittently clever, with pleasantly weird humor ("You honeydicking me?"; "They hate us cuz they ain' us!") and a generous helping of butt-related jokes. I drank heavily while I watched it and thoroughly enjoyed it. But it's not the kind of movie you threaten a nation over. Jesus! The Interview is worth a "9/11 type event" and yet Human Centipede gets a free pass? That's the real crime, if you ask me.

B-

***

Black Mirror

--> Minor spoilers <--

If you haven't yet watched this very depressing and very, very good show from the United Kingdom, get on dat. It's streaming on Netflix, so you don't have an excuse.

Black Mirror has been described as a modern version of The Twilight Zone, which is actually a fairly apt description. Characters in The Twilight Zone have a tendency to learn lessons too late and have to live (or die) with their stupid mistakes and failings. There are many characters who are "punished" in Black Mirror, but it's us, the audience, who ends up having our noses rubbed in our mistakes.

Sounds fun, right?


Black Mirror is centered around all the ways that we--people--have used technology (or *could* use technology, since most of the technological advances shown in the show don't quite exist yet) to destroy ourselves. As an example, the episode "The Entire History of You" takes place in a not-too-distant future in which people can have a "grain" implanted behind their ear that records everything they see and do, so they can relive their memories ad nauseam. It's groundbreaking technology, no doubt. In the episode, a man uses it to obsess over the questionable fidelity of his wife and ultimately destroy his marriage.

"The Entire History of You" and, indeed, all of the episodes of Black Mirror, is not about how technology is evil, but about how humankind can be cruel, apathetic, obsessive, jealous, and take delight in the humiliation of others. The show uses the concept futuristic technology to hold up a (black) mirror to humanity's weakest and basest instincts--who we are today, who we were yesterday, and who we may become. The show's creator, Charlie Brooker, says of the title: "[It] is the one you'll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone." It's a show for the modern age and it's done so well. I urge you to seek it out.

A-

The Road Less Taken

Movies: Wild

I was blown away by Wild. But that's not too much of a surprise. Having read Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of her "Dear Sugar" advice columns, I knew that the story of Wild--how Strayed hiked over 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone to heal from her mother's death--would be an astounding, deeply touching one.

Strayed's philosophy on life, apparent in her "Dear Sugar" column, is one of radical empathy and forgiveness. And she traveled a most difficult path to get to that philosophy. Her dad was an abusive alcoholic, so her mom left him when Strayed was six. But although times were often tough for her family, the bond she had with her mother was unshakeable--so much so that it nearly destroyed Strayed when her mom was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer and died just a month later when Strayed was 22. In her grief, she turned to promiscuous sex (she was married at the time to her first husband) and drugs, including heroin. Her decision to hike the Pacific Crest Trail came from seeing a trail guide about it in a convenience store and perhaps instinctively knowing that she needed something radically different and physically difficult to force herself back on the right path in life.

I haven't read Wild (though I definitely want to after seeing the movie), but I don't need to have read it to understand that it was a difficult book to adapt for the big screen. A significant chunk of the film is just Strayed on the trail by herself, with little or no dialogue. And nearly half the film is made up of flashbacks. But Nick Hornby, who adapted Strayed's memoir into a screenplay, did a masterful job. Although the flashbacks jump around in time, from moments in Strayed's childhood, to a "come to Jesus" moment with a friend who confronts her about her drug use, to visiting her mom in the hospital, they never feel disjointed or confusing. In fact, the atemporal nature of the flashbacks tell a richer, more holistic story about who Strayed is and where she came from. For the scenes where Strayed is alone on the trail, Hornby (and director Jean-Marc Vallee) use quiet voiceovers to represent Strayed's thoughts, or settled on no dialogue at all--just the sounds of nature. This was really effective, and the movie never dragged or left me bored.

And Reese Witherspoon's performance as Strayed. Wow. Witherspoon has a (perhaps unfair) reputation for playing good girls and goody two shoes (although one of her more edgy roles--Tracy Flick in Election--is also one of her best). But as Strayed, she isn't afraid to get her hands a little dirty. Strayed was, in fact, a "good girl" right up until her mom died. She went to college while working full time and had ambitions and dreams. But her mother's death led her down a path she could never have fathomed. Witherspoon does these scenes, including having sex with two men in an alley and shooting up heroin in a flophouse, with a vulnerability that never comes off as overly dramatic or unrealistic. Even in the depths of her lowest moments, she's still very human and--you can tell--a strong woman. A woman who wants something better for herself. Witherspoon could have gnawed these scenes to death, but she doesn't. She's understated and believable.

Other good things about Wild include the wonderful soundtrack, with Simon and Garfunkel's beautiful "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)" popping up multiple times during the film. The music adds to the film rather than distract from it. Also, Laura Dern gives a joyous and heartbreaking performance as Strayed's mother, Bobbi. Dern's smile just lights up all the scenes she's in. It's easy to believe that the death of this woman would be so devastating to Strayed.

There are so few films that look at women's journeys and don't focus on romantic love. Wild really is unique in this regard. The film is a love story--between a mother and her daughter, and between a woman and her soul. It's also a tale of rebirth. When Cheryl Strayed hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, she wasn't just making an attempt to remove or lessen her grief--she was actively growing, with each step, each mistake, each scary night and blistered day, into the woman she always wanted to become. It's a beautiful story that in Hornby, Witherspoon, and Vallee's capable hands, is beautifully told.

A+ 

The Rich Are Different From You and Me

Movies: Foxcatcher

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand." --F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Rich Boy"

Foxcatcher is a deeply weird, deeply uncomfortable film by Bennet Miller (Capote, Moneyball) that is based on a strange true story. Mark and Dave Schultz were brothers who both won gold medals in wrestling in the 1984 Olympics. You may or may not be surprised to learn that winning a gold medal in the Olympics does not guarantee a life of luxury. The film opens in 1987. Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum, in what's easily the most affecting role of his career--more on that later) lives in a crappy apartment, eats ramen for dinner, and makes the occasional buck giving less-than-inspiring speeches at local elementary schools. His gentle and patient brother, Dave (Mark Ruffalo), is doing a little better: he has a wife and a couple of cute kids and he coaches wrestling to make a living. Dave also seems to have a more relaxed sense of self and contentedness with his average post-Olympic life. 

Fate literally calls Mark on the phone one day. An assistant of John du Pont, member of the pornographically rich du Pont family, telephones Mark and asks that he come and visit du Pont at the family estate. A little befuddled at what this rich guy wants with him, Mark takes the trip and meets du Pont face-to-face.

John du Pont is played by Steve Carell. With an enormous, beaked false nose, hooded eyes, and age spots sprinkled all over his face, Carell is unrecognizable--and ugly as sin. Carell also speaks with a strange cadence: soft-spoken, with halting pauses in the middle of sentences where you wouldn't expect them (a little like William Shatner). This is a completely vanity-free performance by Carell, who has built his career playing both good-natured and bad-natured doofuses and dorky dads. But John du Pont is something altogether different: a creature born of such wealth that the idea that some people can't be bought simply does not compute in his silver spoon and silk sheet brain. Steve Carell is fucking terrifying as du Pont.

du Pont wants to sponsor the American wrestling team for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He wants Mark on the team, and he also wants Dave Schultz to help coach. The reasons behind du Pont's fascination with wrestling are never fully fleshed out, but the film teases that it may partially have to do with du Pont's repressed homosexual desires (particularly during a scene where du Pont beckons Mark to a late-night "practice" session) and also in an effort to gain his mother's approval. Mom du Pont is played by Vanessa Redgrave, who captures the icy cold elegance of a woman who probably had a nanny raise her children for her. 

Whatever the reasons for du Pont's love of wrestling, Mark jumps at the chance to feel relevant again and to get paid and live on the luxurious du Pont estate while in training. However, he soon realizes that the man du Pont is really after is his brother, and this leads to extreme tensions between du Pont and Mark.

I don't need to reveal the ending of the film because you can Google "John du Pont Schultz brothers" and read all about it, but suffice it to say that the story does not end well. Foxcatcher doesn't focus on the climax of this strange tale, but the events leading up to it, which make for over two hours of the uneasy feeling that something horrible is about to happen. Trust me, this ain't a popcorn flick.

But the real draw to Foxcatcher are the amazing performances of the three leads. Mark Ruffalo offers support to Tatum and Carell, who are the real stars of this film, by standing aside to let the two other actors have the performances of their careers. Ruffalo plays one of the only relatable characters in the film: a deeply compassionate man who is able to set boundaries with du Pont where his brother cannot. 

Tatum is truly brave in this movie. An actor who is known for his muscle and good looks, Tatum plays Mark Schultz as a man who appears to be a big, muscular oaf on the outside, but emotional and needy for approval and acceptance on the inside. I was struck by how often Mark was explicitly or implicitly treated like an animal in Foxcatcher. There's a scene where he has a disagreement with du Pont, who responds by slapping him and calling him an "ungrateful ape". There's a scene where he and dozens of other wrestlers strip down to be weighed during the Olympic trials--men who are reduced to naked bodies to be examined and categorized. du Pont treats Mark like a pet. Where du Pont's mother has her beloved, world-class horses, John du Pont has Mark Schultz--a big, beautiful, pliant animal. Tatum gives an amazing performance walking the fine line between playing up that silent, obedient animal side at times and allowing the audience to see the depth of his humanity at other times.

As I mentioned above, Carell also gives the performance of his career as John du Pont. Not only does he transform himself physically, he takes on the cadence and mannerisms of a strange, rich man who has been sheltered from reality his whole life, yet who understands agonizing loneliness all the same. In one scene he reveals to Mark that he only had one friend growing up...and that it turned out his mother was paying the boy to be his friend all along. Although du Pont is presented as the villain of the movie, it's hard not to have some pity for the man who was crippled under the weight of his family's wealth. No wonder he turns to wrestling--a purely physical, "low" sport (as his mother sneeringly calls it) that is the total opposite of the refinement and elegance he has known his whole life.

I was very impressed with Foxcatcher. In addition to the excellent acting, the film just had a bizarre ambiance that was very unsettling. It takes guts to make a movie that will likely repel audiences, but Bennet Miller did it and the result is a movie that feels like a psychological horror film, but also a glimpse into the lives of the very rich that will make you feel grateful for your average, ramen-eating lifestyle.

A-

Mother Terror

Movies: The Babadook

Everyone knows that the best horror movies contain scary things that are metaphors for other scary things. Dawn of the Dead isn't about zombies--it's about mindless consumerism! Hostel isn't just gross torture porn--it's about America's fear of foreigners! Vampire movies are all about fears revolving around sex, disease, and contamination. The Shining is about alcoholism. Ginger Snaps is about menstruation and puberty. This list goes on. The mark of a great horror movie is not how many times it makes you jump out of your seat, but how thoroughly it gets under your skin. Because while ghosts and ghouls, witches and vampires, zombies and serial killers are all scary enough, the real horror is what we experience in the day-to-day. The existential dread of being conscious that someday we, and everyone we love, will be dead. The hazy knowledge of immense human cruelty--and worse, apathy--that lurks in our brains but rarely hits us with the full force of its horror. These are the real terrors. Ghosts are just child's play (although, to be fair, the movie Child's Play scares the shit out of me).

And so it is with The Babadook, a complex, layered, minimalistic Australian horror film written and directed by Jennifer Kent. The Babadook uses one of the most fraught institutions we know of to terrify the audience: motherhood. As someone who is most definitely not a mother, I can only guess how scary (and simultaneously beautiful) it must be to grow a living thing inside you, give birth to it with all the pain and blood that birth entails, and then...be terrified for its safety and well-being for the rest of your life. If the definition of courage is not the absence of fear, but to move forward in spite of it, well, to choose to be a mother is truly courageous.

In The Babadook, Amelia is a single mother to 6-year-old Samuel. Her circumstances are incredibly tragic: her husband died in a car accident while driving Amelia to the hospital to give birth. Amelia survives the accident, of course, only to have the memory of her husband's death taint the day of her son's birth so much that she can't bear to celebrate Samuel's birthday on the actual day. Samuel is a piece of work himself. On the one hand, he's full of fears and anxieties, insisting that Amelia check under his bed and read him a soothing bedtime story before he goes to sleep. On the other hand, Sam has a surprising amount of bravery. He climbs to the very top of a swing set (freaking out Amelia in the process). He builds homemade weapons to protect himself and his mother against the monsters and bogeymen he believes lurk somewhere in his house. And, devastatingly, he shoulders the burden of his mother's resentment on his small back, whether he is fully aware of it or not.

 One night, Sam finds a mysterious book, titled Mister Babadook, on his shelf. Neither he nor Amelia knows where it came from. The gruesome pop-up book introduces Mr. Babadook, a ghoulish creature in a top hat and cape that hides under children's beds. Soon after the discovery of the book, strange things begin to happen around Sam and Amelia's house. Sam blames the Babadook and is constantly terrified and unable to sleep, which means that Amelia also becomes increasingly sleep-deprived and on edge. Once Amelia begins to see the Babadook herself, the movie takes a turn into that liminal world where you don't know if ghouls are *actually* haunting the character, or if it's all in their head. But either way, Amelia becomes something of a ghoul herself: screaming at Sam, acting erratically, and seeing visions of her dead husband.

The metaphor is pretty obvious here. The Babadook is a personification of the deep well of agony and suffering that Amelia has carried around since the day of Samuel's birth. Amelia has no one to turn to because it's not safe to reveal any negative emotions about your own child. And Samuel is a handful. There's a scene where he (played by an astonishing child actor, Noah Wiseman) "sees" the Babadook and just starts screaming at the top of his lungs. Watching it, I curled into a ball and wanted to cover my ears. A child's scream is both terrifying and--annoying is too mild a word--profoundly disturbing. Just listen to that scream and you'll feel a cascade of sympathy for anyone who has ever raised a child.

There were two things that I really loved about this movie. The first is Mister Babadook himself. In an interview, director Jennifer Kent explained that she wanted to "create a myth in a domestic setting", and indeed, The Babadook goes beyond a typical ghost story into something ferocious and primal. The book featured in the movie is a work of art in itself, starting out innocuously enough, with lines about "making friends with a special one", and moving towards a terrifying conclusion: "when you see what's under the bed/you'll wish that you were dead". Just do a Google Image search for "babadook book" and you'll see what I mean. Or see the movie.

The other thing I loved about The Babadook was how deeply emotional it was without being manipulative. The story is about a mother and her son and their mutual fear of one another. But even in the depths of Amelia's despair, she clings to the love she has--in spite of the circumstances of his birth--for Samuel. And to hear Samuel's little pipsqueak voice say "I'll protect you, Mum"....my ovaries just about exploded.

Here's the thing: I'm an emotional person, just like anyone else. But I want my emotions and feelings to be authentic, both in real life and in art/entertainment. I hate movies that spoon feed you emotions. I hate manipulative movies, just like I hate emotional manipulation in real life. If you're going to make a movie about the parent-child bond, show me something real, right? Don't pretend it's all gumdrops and unicorns and toys that never break. I know parenthood isn't like that. The Babadook has the balls to say that motherhood isn't always a walk in the park. And it even goes beyond that, suggesting that motherhood, in fact, can be a nightmare at times. But although the movie takes the audience to the precipice of the terror of motherhood, it doesn't throw us over the edge. It lets us see that terror, those difficult emotions and moments, and then reels us back in and reminds us that love--love from a mother to a child and a child to a mother--really can save us.

I can't say that The Babadook scared the shit out of me. But it did almost make me cry (an extremely rare event--I almost never cry during movies). And for that, I respect the hell out of it as a unique, creative, and deeply humane piece of cinema.

Grade B

Please note, if you care, that I am switching my grading system from a 1-5 star scale to a A-F grading scale since it seems more nuanced.

Talk Nerdy to Me

Movies: The Theory of Everything

I originally began this review by referring to Dr. Stephen Hawking as a "straight up baller"...but somehow, it seemed disrespectful to do so (although given Hawking's sense of humor, he might actually appreciate it). But any way you look at it, Hawking has lived a remarkable life. Diagnosed at age 21 with a motor neuron disease similar to ALS, Hawking was told he had two years to live. Hawking was basically like "fuck that" and is still alive today at age 72. Hawking is a theoretical physicist who has won countless awards and honors for his work. He is one of the most well known scientists alive today and is also an accessible writer who is able to translate his incredible knowledge for the average reader. And he did it all while battling a disease that took away his ability to walk, move, and speak without the help of a device. Such a disease would crush the spirit of many people, but not Stephen Hawking.

But what many people don't know about Hawking is that behind this remarkable man stood a remarkable woman. The Theory of Everything is the story of Hawking's relationship with his first wife, Jane Wilde, whom he met in college and who married him despite what was essentially a death sentence when he was first diagnosed with motor neuron disease. What fascinated me about this movie is how much time it devoted to Wilde (it is, after all, based on her memoir, Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen) and how sympathetic it is to Wilde's struggles to raise a family (she and Stephen had three children together) with a severely disabled spouse while also maintaining an identity of her own. Talk about "having it all"!

Wilde and Hawking were married from 1965 to 1995. Hawking was diagnosed in 1963 and had progressively less control over his own body pretty quickly. Obviously, this couldn't have been a picnic for Hawking himself, but you can also imagine the emotional and physical turmoil Wilde went through. The world of 1965 was not remotely handicap accessible, nor did it look too kindly on "unconventional" relationships, which Hawking and Wilde most surely had. To be a wife in 1965 meant raising children and deferring to your husband. But what if your husband couldn't feed himself? Or hold his own children without assistance? And Wilde had interests and passions of her own. She was a very intelligent woman who eventually got a PhD in medieval poetry. I admired how The Theory of Everything did not make Wilde out to be a saint, nor did it paint her and Hawking's marriage as all roses and champagne.

However, as a PG-13 film--and a very tasteful one at that--The Theory of Everything holds back from giving the audience the entire gritty picture of Wilde and Hawking's relationship. The issue of Hawking's ability to father children is brought up in the most innocent, PG-rated way possible. A college buddy asks Hawking if the disease affects "everything", to which Hawking replies "No, different system. Involuntary." But the film doesn't even get close to examining how a disabled person might actually have sex (for an excellent film on that very topic, please watch The Sessions, incidentally one of my most-read [and favorite] reviews!). Likewise, we see very little of Hawking's day to day struggles with things like bathing, eating, and using the bathroom. Now, I realize that your average moviegoer isn't thinking "Sure, he's a world-renowned genius and all, but what I really want to know is how Stephen Hawking deals with taking a shit." I get that. Yet seeing the intimate details of what it must be like to live in a disabled body, or be in love with/married to a disabled person...well, I feel like it would have made for a more interesting and humanistic film. But I'm not everybody.

And to be fair, we do get to see some of the odder aspects of Wilde and Hawking's relationship. Specifically, the introduction of Jonathan Jones, a local choir director who befriended Wilde and offered to help out Wilde and Hawking in an unofficial caretaker capacity and also as an additional father figure for their kids. He actually moved in with the family, which was highly unconventional (and pisses off Wilde's in-laws) to say the least.

Spoiler alert? (does it count as a spoiler if it's just someone's real life?)

Jones and Wilde got married after she and Hawking divorced in 1995. The movie plays pretty coy about whether or not they got it on before she and Hawking separated.

/end spoilers

The film has an ace in the hole in Eddie Redmayne's portrayal--no, embodiment--of Hawking. All the acting (including Felicity Jones as Wilde) is solid, but Redmayne...holy shit. He already looks like Hawking, but the actor's physical performance is amazing. I read an interview with Redmayne where he revealed that he spent so much time capturing the way Hawking is, well, contorted, in the later stages of his disease, that the muscles on one side of his face became noticeably stronger by the end of the shoot. Redmayne's performance really is the centerpiece of The Theory of Everything and totally deserves an Oscar nod.

Before I went to see this film, I read a review that referred to it as "neutered". As I point out above, the film shies away from anything too shocking or depressing about Hawking's disease and his marriage to Wilde, so I understand the criticism. But I was still very pleasantly surprised by the movie. It exceeded my expectations and made me want to learn more about Stephen Hawking. It may air on the side of gentle and romantic, rather than gritty realism, but it's a solid film that pays respect to the personal and romantic life of a man known more for his brain than anything else.

4 out of 5 stars