Interstellar

Interstellar rolls on like a long crescendoing symphony: Adagio movement – the dying earth, Allegro – space, and Scherzo – the black hole. And although the planets and the void provide a gorgeous and fascinating (if not confusing) structure to the opus, this song has as much to do with sentiment as it does with outer space. It’s an ambitious composition with big themes. Both the heart and head parts of Interstellar are complex and large-scale things, and you’ll need to stay frosty to hang in if you see it.

Interstellar’s space-time anthem takes place in an earth time – maybe not too far in the future it seems – when the world has turned against its inhabitants. Blight and global famine have reduced mankind and its governments down to a single focus on survival. Society is dotted with advanced technology – relics of what was. But the little that is left is not maintained, given up on for the more basic cause of putting food on the table. Technology is almost shunned as if maybe it were the cause of earth’s current challenges. This makes Cooper, our protagonist played by Matthew McConaughey, an anachronism on his rapidly changing earth – he’s an engineer and space pilot with no more ships to fly. He farms now, like most others do, and rages against the blight and the dust hoping, like most others do, that the next year and the next crop will be better… but it wont be better. 

Peculiar circumstances guide Cooper, a widower raising two children on his corn farm (one of the few crops that will grow these days), and his high-IQ daughter Murphy to what is left of NASA. There, Cooper meets back up with an old mentor and teacher, Professor Brand (Michael Caine), who is working on an escape strategy for those left on the dying earth. Mankind’s exodus will be made possible by the mysterious appearance of a wormhole near Saturn. Its origin is unknown but its timely arrival must be more than coincidence. NASA has sent missions through the hole already and has identified three potentially habitable planets. They are preparing an experimental spacecraft to travel through the hole to recover the previous missions’ data and determine if there is a suitable planet. Coop is the perfect pilot for this trip but there is a catch ­– traveling through the wormhole messes with time. What will be weeks and months for the travelers will be years on earth. This, Professor Brand explains, will give him time to solve the main problem of moving all of humanity to the new home… gravity, but those Coop leaves behind will be much older than him, or worse, if and when he returns.

Those with music backgrounds will likely be commenting in their head to me that the first movement of a symphony is usually fast paced – not an adagio. They’d be right of course, but Interstellar is a slow starter. It even feels a bit awkward as we trudge through the motivation for it all and get used to McConaughey as an astronaut and, oh yeah, Anne Hathaway as an astrophysicist (Brand’s daughter). But writer and director Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins, Inception) must set up the dissonance – what guided Cooper to NASA, where did the worm hole come from, who wins the race against time, man or nature (or man’s nature)? – I told you it was ambitious. But every thing starts to harmonize in space where McConaughey and the rest hit their stride.

The influences of past sci-fi film makers on Interstellar are very evident – Nolan has admitted as much: the space ballets of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the used feel of Aliens’ ships and space stations for examples. But the story is more closely comparable to that of Contact – big and bold and beyond us sometimes. Some will find Nolan’s resolution in Interstellar to consonance incredible… others may find it inane as he pits the human attributes of faith and love up against instinct and logic. He’s trying to cover all bases, striving for the cold science and beauty of 2001 and the heart and magic of Spielberg films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Yes, Interstellar is a very, very ambitious work. Not all of the film’s goals are completely obtained I think – they seem just outside of an impossible reach. But it gets us most of the way there and that feels like more than enough. 8 out of 10.

Fury

“War is hell”, my father would tell me when I was a boy, was not just a catch phrase, but the gospel truth. "There is little glory in it," he would teach, "it’s mostly just pain and death." He'd know about war I figured, having fought in two of them - he wore a long panel of ribbons on his chest when he went to work each morning and those ribbons matched the heavy medals I would dig out of the bottom of the cedar chest sometimes... stars and crosses and eagles. Yeah, he'd know I figured, and so I believed him.  And having viewed Fury’s trailers, I was prepared to be reminded of that truth when I bought the ticket. But Fury director David Ayer isn’t content with just a reminder of what I already thought that I knew; he is committed, in Fury, to drag us up and down and through the devil's hot house - and then back and forth across it again and again until that message becomes like a mantra given forth in repeated and graphic displays of physical, mental and spiritual pain - pounding over and over again until we’ve learned the lesson.

Fury is an examination of the depth and height of human behavior in war, set during the last month of the European Theater of WWII (April 1945). The allies are making a final surge through Germany - the outcome of the war is certain. And yet Germany is commanded by its fuehrer to fight on, including now it's women and children, in defense of the motherland - an order gruesomely enforced by the dreaded SS. A battle-weary tank crew commanded by U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Don "Wardaddy" Collier (Brad Pitt) is slugging it out against a sporadic but still deadly defense. The veteran team in the M4A3E8 Sherman tank, named Fury, has been together from North Africa, through Normandy, to here. The crew has lost its bow gunner - dead in the tank as it pulls into a rendezvous base. There, the gunner is replaced by Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters). Norman’s never been inside of a tank, never seen combat, and is a subtraction not an addition to the tightly bonded Fury team - “I promised my crew a long time ago I'd keep them alive… you’re standing in the way of that.” Collier tells the petrified private.

It takes a while for Ayer to get to the payoff part of the film - the desperate situation of the crew’s disabled tank in the path of an advancing enemy force. The first half of the film is spent getting to know Fury’s crew. They’ve lived through several hells and it’s taken its toll on each of them. Ayer’s soldiers, all those appearing on the screen it seems, are not only physically scarred but mentally damaged. They are hard and vulgar, their feel for human life muffled – there is no benevolence in Ayer’s war. The crew's humanity has been stripped away leaving little else but loyalty to themselves – even to Norman eventually. Pitt shines here, amidst the artillery, the fire and smoke, as the scarred patriarch of these men. But a surprisingly brighter glow comes from Shia Lebeouf as Boyd "Bible" Swan, the only “believer” in the crew until Norman comes along. His character is more interesting than Pitt’s and the more believably played up against the over the top atrocities of Collier and the debauchery of Grady "Coon-Ass" Travis (Jon Bernthal, The Walking Dead), the tanks loader – Lebeouf nails it.

The detail in Fury is exceptional, from the uniforms to the armament (real Shermans and the only working German Tiger Tank on the planet). But for a film with such attention to detail and with so much care taken to obtain realism, I was disappointed that Fury’s long battle finale was an artificial device – an unreal encounter. The contrivance provides the opportunity for a glorious (oddly) end story and some deep ( I suppose) visual symbolism, but it seems suddenly out of place and severely weakens the film. Fury is grey and grim. It is tense, at least in its second half. It is uncomfortable, disturbing and often wrenching. But, by the end, the film is less significant than these attributes would lead to believe. Unfortunately, Fury's whole is somehow less than the sum of it's parts. And yet… still a 7 out of 10. 

The Maze Runner

There seems to be a never-ending stream of young adult post-apocalyptic literature and subsequent big-screen adaptations coming to us now – and why not, considering the monster successes of book-film combos like The Hunger Games and Divergent. I imagine a writing team sitting around a table spit balling plot ideas in hopes of finding the next wave crest of the current dystopia typhoon -

Coauthor 1: “What about a cube?”

Coauthor 2: “Seen it. How about a Maze – kids in a giant maze land”

Coauthor 3: “Yeah, a giant maze filled with monstrous challenges. Youth in maze but they don’t know how they got there or how to get out – good idea”

Coauthor 1: “There’s an adult operation behind this of course. But why are the kids trapped in the maze?”

Coauthor 2: “Doesn’t matter… we’ll figure it out along the way.”

I know that the above was not Maze Runner’s origin – neither novel nor film – but the movie’s derivative feel and silly non-ending made it seem like it was. 

Boys have been delivered in The Maze Runner, one by one via elevator shaft, to the middle of an intricate labyrinth called the Glade – each arriving with no memory of who he is or where he came from. By the time the shaft transports Thomas (Dylan O’Brien from the Teen Wolf series) to the surface, three years after the first boy was delivered, a small functioning society of Gladers has been established. The veteran Gladers have seemingly explored all escape options to no avail but still send “runners” into the maze during the day to map its patterns, which shift during the night. The maze closes at dusk and is patrolled then by screeching creatures called Grievers – no boy left in the maze after the maze doors close has survived the night. Thomas learns that the fragile Glader society is supported by supplies from the shaft that arrive monthly with each new recruit. Peace in the Glade, its leaders believe, is maintained through a rigid set of rules, including limits on entering the maze to explore escape routes. The rules must be followed to avoid the past periods of deadly savagery that are hinted at by the group’s leaders and by the names of boys now gone that are scratched in the maze walls. But Thomas is different and the boys sense it. Thomas sees flickers of his pre-Glade existence in dreams and his arrival seems to have triggered a shift in the maze and Griever patterns. Things are changing that threaten the Gladers society a veteran leader explains… and its all Thomas’ fault.

If any of this is striking a familiar cord, its not surprising. Maze’s story line and plot points seem a dumbed-down mash up of previous and weightier pieces of social examination and science fiction – the commentary on human nature in “Lord of the Flies” and the constructed and inescapable environment of Phillip Jose Farmers Riverworld seem obvious big brothers to Maze Runner’s more adolecent concepts. The Gladers themselves even seem familiar with O’Brien playing Thomas in a style that reminds, even in looks and voice, of other reluctant boy heroes like LeBeouf’s Sam in Transformers and Andrew Garfield in the latest Spiderman. I’ll grant though that this screen-version of the Glade world, created by James Dashner’s in his 2009 novel of the same name, is an interesting set up – and Runner, I believe, is a better first-in-a-series film than The Hunger Games. But the intrigue of the secret of the maze’s purpose can only hold so long without some resolution – even if only of the intermediate sort. The mild suspense the film builds toward discovery dissolves to a risible commercial for the next installment of the series – and lacks any sort of payoff. The Maze Runner is, in the end, interesting but unsatisfying as we’ll all have to wait for the next thee volumes to see if the authors of this marginally clever trap know their way out of it or not. 5.5 out of 10

The Hundred Foot Journey is a straight and pleasant ride

Predictability is usually considered to be a negative attribute in a motion picture… and there are absolutely no unexpected turns in The Hundred Foot Journey. But really, most of what we get on the big screen is familiar – we’ve seen it before in other garbs. Those that study story telling inform us that almost all stories follow the same basic pattern - they call it the “hero’s journey”. The hero is called to some adventure and is challenged or tempted along the adventure’s path. But aided by helpers the hero is eventually able to pass through the abyss and is reborn through some revelation that frees him/her from those challenges. The hero then returns home transformed and in a way that rewards his fellow man. I wont tell you whether Hundred Foot Journey follows that template exactly… let’s just say that it will only take a few scenes for you to see what’s coming in the rest. But the film is so fun to watch and listen to that you’re probably not going to be bothered much by its unchallenging nature.

Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal), the son of an Indian restaurant family, and the family’s most interested cook, is the hero in this myth. The family is forced to leave India and ply its trade in foreign lands. The father of the family, played by the great Indian actor Om Puri, chooses a small French town to set up shop. The only problem is that their new Indian restaurant, complete with the sights and sounds (loud sounds) and aromas of their country, is located just across the street from a Michelin-starred French food Mecca whose snooty mistress (Madame Mallory, played deliciously by Dame Helen Mirren) will not tolerate the classless eatery across the way interfering with the perfection she is striving to create. But young Hassan is something of a culinary savant it seems (anyone tasting his cooking reacts as if hit by a police taser) and the new restaurant soon gains a following.

As with any hero’s journey though, trials soon come to challenge family ties, love, and life. The impediments in Hundred Foot Journey, however, are relatively timid – more steps than steeples – and certainly manageable by any hero worth his salt (or coriander). More interesting is the evolution of the relationship between Puri’s and Mirren’s more mature characters – and the old pros’ performances, along with the fine food, help carry Journey from simply pleasant to almost satisfying.

Although the film does not strongly test the viewers mind, imagination, or emotion, it is pretty and its charm is as bottomless and unfailing as the supply of secret Indian spices Hassan uses to create his masterpieces. From the French landscape to the Indian cuisine (don’t see this one on an empty stomach), Journey is easy on the eyes and the heart. If nothing else, Journey’s calm and curveless ride will cleanse your pallet from the relentless action of those never ending summer blockbusters. 7.5 out of 10.

Edge of Tomorrow

One could say that Edge of Tomorrow, now near the end of its in-theater run, has under achieved at the box office. Compare it’s total gross (USA) to date of $98M to the atrocious Transformers: Age of Tomorrow’s take of $237M (foolish movie goers). I’ll guess at the main reason more people didn’t make it to Edge… it’s Tom Cruise isn’t it? Hey, that’s the guy who jumped up and down on Opra’s sofa! - Yes. Isn’t he that science religion guy? - Yep. Isn’t he the guy that kept Katie Holmes chained to a washing machine in his basement for three years? – Can’t confirm that one. Tom Cruise may be those guys (except the last one), but he is also the guy who stars in some pretty good movies – sometimes very good movies – and Edge of Tomorrow is one of the very good ones.

Edge follows on the heels of another, more mediocre, Cruise-starring, sci-fi film – Oblivion, but has a lot more kick than that stylish but flimsily held together 2013 effort. In Edge, a ferocious alien race has invaded a future earth and is quickly warring its way across the planet, crushing the world’s armies as it goes. Cruise plays William Cage, a smarmy U.S. military public-affairs officer assigned to cover the fighting on a front line. Inexperienced and cowardly, Cage refuses to go and is arrested, busted to private, and plopped down, untrained, in a combat zone as punishment. Though Cage is killed minutes after entering the battle, he finds himself starting over in a time loop, repeating the same mission and being killed over and over again. Cage isn’t the only one that keeps getting killed. The battle against the aliens is hopeless. Not only do they appear to be superior physically to the human armies, they also seem to be able to mirror and counter any human army battle strategy – this trait earning them the nickname of “Mimics”.

Each time Cage is reborn in the mission – although perpetually perplexed about what is happening to him - he learns to survive a little longer. He encounters a kindred soul of sorts in Special Forces war hero Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) during one mission and teams up with her, in each of his looped days, toward defeating the Mimics - think Groundhog Day mated with X-Box here. Cage and Vrataski are in a real-life Call of Duty video game - they move a little further down the gauntlet, die, Cage re-spawns at the beginning, finds Vrataski and they start all over. With each run they pick up a new special move, like pressing in a special controller code - A-B-Left-Right-Left then fire - but they are not holding a game controller… they are the game.

Time loops can be tricky to present on the big screen without viewer confusion and fatigue. Here director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith), with a Dante Harper script, masterfully communicates the bizarre feeling of repeating the same violent and tragic period over and over again – letting the audience understand the confusion and hopelessness of the trap without the action becoming monotonous. The film even takes on a dark comic tone as the two warriors utilize the time-loop effect to maximum advantage, quickly terminating failed tries by intentionally offing Cage so they can get on to the next attempt.

As military sci-fiers go (Starship Troopers, Independence Day, etc.), Edge’s action is as good as any. The repeated hit-the-beach battle scenes are frenetic and crisp. And the time loop is not the only attribute of the film that can be compared to the classic Groundhog Day – as Cage repeats the mission he is slowly transformed from coward to something more – buoyed by the hope and example that the warrior Vrataski provides. Cruise’ performance is good (if not deep) as usual, but Blunt is better -Vrataski is the most intriguing character in the film.

Although the crowds flocked to the likes of Captain America and the latest Planet of the Apes, the clever but forgotten Edge is the cream of the summer action film crop and, I predict, will wind up on many year-end top 10 movie lists. If you went with the masses to the lesser thrillers, don’t miss Edge when it becomes available for home viewing. 8 out of 10.

The latest Godzilla film is terrible… and wonderful

The new Godzilla is likely to be the worst movie I’ll recommend seeing this year, or maybe ever. Because bad, you see, sometimes is good - especially when its comes to the large-monster movie genre.

It was a little shaky at first. Godzilla Director Gareth Edward's opening scene of tender loss was so earnestly played that I worried that his would be the first of the 28 Godzilla movies to take itself seriously, or, in other words, that the movie might try to be good… which would be bad, if you see my logic. I shouldn’t have stressed. Immediately after that short scare, the film dropped down to its natural level and began to demonstrate all of the ridiculous (or glorious) attributes that are just part of the DNA of any really bad (or maybe good) movie with the name Godzilla in it. These asinine (or genius) elements include:  

Trait 1 - Multiple large monsters for more monster-on-monster battle fun: The best Godzilla films (or the worst, where worst might mean best) have matched the big aquatic lizard up against other big… ah… things, like Mothra, a radioactive moth and her caterpillar young, or the three-headed monster King Ghidorah (Monster Zero) from Planet X. This time Godzilla is up against giant reptile-bug things - prehistoric animals hatched from spores buried deep underground eons ago. One might presume the film’s creators are harking back to one of Godzilla's past nemeses, Rodan, a mutated pterosaur that gave the big guy all sorts of trouble back in the 70’s, but these creatures really look more like a combo of the Cloverfield monster and the bugs from Starship Troopers - they’re cool, but not very original.

Trait 2 - A horrendously ridiculous premise for where these big guys come from: We’ve been trained over time to understand that Godzilla and his associates are mutations caused by radiation - payback to the humans for mishandling the power of the element U. Close, but not quite the case in this reboot. Godzilla’s new enemies are mega-predators from prehistory, not just mutating from radioactivity but actually feeding on it. The reptile-bugs, referred to in the film as MUTO’s (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms), eat radioactive material like food, somehow converting small amounts of it into large amounts of mass (them) - you experts on the relation of energy to mass times the speed of light squared will have to help us out with that one - feel free to use the comment box below to derive whatever equations you need to. And what of Godzilla? Well, he’s been lurking deep in the ocean near areas of high radioactivity and returns once the MUTO’s appear – why you ask... to "bring balance to nature". Of course… balance nature - it’s so clear.

Trait 3 - Monster road trips: All bad (good) Godzilla movies need a road trip. The giant beasts need to travel long distances from different parts of the world for some outrageous reason. The great part of this tradition is that the path of this long trip must intersect with at least three major population centers containing massive city skylines providing awesome battle arenas. What are the odds that among all the vast valleys and plains, Godzilla would stumble onto say... Vegas? – Exactly 100% in this series… lets just say you might want to cancel your reservations at Circus Circus this summer.

To these key pieces, the film’s writers add the obligatory military leader (David Strathairn – The Bourne Legacy - as Rear Admiral William Stenz) whose strategy is always the opposite of what the obligatory scientist (Ken Watanabe – Batman Begins - as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa) suggests. It doesn't really mater whose plan they take, there's never much we humans can do to stop the inevitable Godzilla-movie monster throw down. Even the thick-tongued Watanabe’s Dr. Seriwaza finally relents uttering the most repeatable line in the film... "Let them fight". And here is where the fun really begins in Godzilla. For those of you who read this blog with some regularity (all four of you), you know my aversion to the requisite action-film final battle scenes which are just a series missiles fired and blows delivered while we’ve-seen-them-before explosions go off around the good guy and the bad guy. But it’s different in Godzilla. We fans of the genre long for the final battle, especially because now Godzilla and his foes are so nicely rendered. And Godzilla does not disappoint in this area, with the beasts using every inch of dense urban territory to gain an advantage and every nonsensical special power they possess to do in the other guy. I believe that the end game alone of this cheesy bit of guilty pleasure is worth the price of a ticket for fans of Godzilla and maybe for a lot of you others too.

Regardless of how well the final scene plays for you, odds are, as the credits role, you will count the 123 minutes you spent watching Godzilla as squandered. But give it time – some banter with your fellow movie goers maybe. You might just end up admitting that it was kind of fun... and what were you expecting anyway. A silly 6 out of 10.

Nebraska - Recent DVD Release

A son arrives to pick up a father in a place that a son and father should never plan to meet. He sees his dad, sitting, head in hands, disheveled, confused - but still dad. From that opening, I braced myself against Nebraska, believing that this late-life, father and son road trip might lead too close to home and heart. But Woody Grant (played by Bruce Dern), it turns out, is not my father. In fact, he’s not really much of a father to his now adult sons David (Will Forte) and Ross (Bob Odenkirk) either. But he’s still their father… and he’s convinced he’s about to become a millionaire. 

Woody has won a magazine sweepstakes you see. He’s got the letter to prove it. All he has to do is get from Montana to Nebraska to claim the million-dollar prize. And he’s been found more than once walking the freeway out of Billings to Lincoln to do just that. Weary of trying to convince him of the scam, his son asks him why he just doesn’t take the bus if he wants to go so badly. But Woody doesn’t know the answer to that question nor many others - or maybe he just doesn’t want to answer. He’d rather have his son David take him. The passive David is the younger of the two brothers and the one who gets called for when Woody’s aged and drink-riddled mind causes issues. Ross is the older more driven sibling who would rather just put the old man in a home and move on, and the one that reminds his brother that their father never did anything for them and paid more attention to his alcohol than the family. But David relents and gives Woody the ride he’s so desperate for… he’s still his father after all. 

The ensuing trip to Lincoln takes the awkward duo through Woody’s past, both physically and mentally. Along the way they run into, or are joined by, the odd branches and twigs of the Grant family, all of whom believe Woody’s tale of treasure and are either eager to congratulate him for his luck or scheming to separate him from his future winnings. The character of this family tree is recounted for us by Grant’s fouled-tongued wife Kate (June Squibb) during a stop in Woody’s old home town. We learn quickly that whatever filters Kate once had between her thoughts and her mouth have long worn away as she airs the dirty laundry of the Grant clan and associates at every opportunity. The story’s pace is slow on the road - low key, and director Alexander Payne gives us plenty of time to study the diverse and sometimes ridiculous characters we meet along the path and to ponder the motivations for their actions. But the Fargo-like askewness that Payne seems to be shooting for here sometimes hits a non-resonant tone with the inane canceling the more poignant and worthwhile parts of the film - is it a darkly-comic caricature or a poetic study of human behavior? - it’s never quite clear from Nebraska's simultaneously bleak and oddball accounting.


Within this bipolarity are some stellar pieces of acting, particularly from Dern whose crumpled Woody won him a Best Actor nomination at this year’s Oscars. The film also offers several layers of meanings and morals for you to dig through. I found Nebraska to be more than a tale of binding ties. Yes, there’s some bonding along the road and David learns of a history that he should have known about his father that provides insight into who and what they all are. But just under that is a parable of turning points… decisions made by us or upon us that we allow to fashion our lives. Decisions that we might doubt deep down in places we don’t like to often go or speak of. And of a need for redemption - some single act that might recover us to some degree. Sometimes we want to think we can move beyond our past with that act… then we see it staring back at us from the side of the road. 7.5 out of 10

Captain America: Winter Soldier

I didn’t want to go to the new Captain America movie The Winter Soldier – I was pressured into it. I justified my cave in by noting that Soldier had been getting some positive reviews. Lesson learned: stick with your instincts and pay no attention to movie reviews… except my own of course.

Winter Soldier is the sequel to Joe Johnson’s 2011 introductory effort – Captain America: The First Avenger. The first Cap film was easy enough to forget, so I’ll remind you that we were all introduced back then to Steve Rogers, a scrawny WWII army enlistee who, after being deemed unfit for service, volunteers for a top secret research project that transforms him into Captain America – a super soldier dedicated to defending America’s ideals against all those who threaten them like the evil Hydra organization. It’s now two years after the Battle for New York in which Cap participated as part of The Avengers in the 2012 film of the same name. Although he’s been thawed out for a while now from the deep freeze that allowed him to time travel to our present, he’s still trying to decipher the new tech and the post-9/11, war-on-terror infringements on the freedoms he fought for back in the WW-2. 

The first Captain America film (The First Avenger) felt like a rushed, and obligatory effort made just to get Cap introduced to the world in time for the first Avengers movie. Winter Soldier breaks out a bit, but still feels like simply one more cog in the big Marvel money-making movie wheel. I’m not going to call Winter Soldier a bad film. But it’s not a good film either. It’s a really, really, really average film – like smack-dab-in-the-middle, nothing-special, mainly forgettable, how-many-times-is-he-going-to-slug-that-guy, super-hero film. Punch up the definition of “average” on your iPhone Dictionary App and this movie should come up. And it’s not that I am holding the bar too high on these Marvel films. I grew up reading these guys in the 12-cent drug store comics. I understand the genre – they’re not The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men – I get that these movies are based on outrageous premises and plots that accompany colored pages inside really thin little magazines. But the good ones can still move us a little beyond the POW! and BANG! of it all – maintaining the fantasy and maybe the camp of their source, but adding something special and sophisticated. Batman Begins and Spiderman II (Doc Ock) are examples of this type of moderate transcendence. And Winter Soldier does try to step up… it tries hard not to be ordinary. The story’s creators (directed by Anthony and Joe Russo) serve up a present-day-relevant security vs. freedom theme in a conspiracy/espionage wrapping, and the addition of Robert Redford to the cast definitely brings some weight to the screen. But the nothing-is-as-it-seems and don’t-trust-anybody (Col. Fury actually vocalizes this cliché) plot tools eventually devolve toward heavy, and not so special, CGI mayhem and the ritual audience-endurance test that is the final battle between the super hero and super villain.

One could think that the odd selection of directors Anthony and Joe Russo, whose previous work has been almost exclusively in comedies, was made to add some spark to this bland entry into the Marvel film universe. At the least, I expected the film to have a sharp comic undertone. But there are few laughs in Winter Soldier. What we are offered, however, is a lot impressive ninja moves. Everybody is a ninja in this one. It appears that both S.H.I.E.L.D and Hydra have top-notch ninja training programs. And that is important in a Captain America film because Cap is not nigh immortal like some of his other Avenger teammates (i.e. Thor and the Hulk – by the way… where were the rest of these S.H.I.E.L.D heroes while all the chaos was going on? – Cap could’ve used the help). Cap is just a suped-up mortal and you can’t have too many bombs blowing up or shots fired off around him since they’d actually do some damage if contact were made… hand-to-hand is a better option for Captain America. Oh, shots were fired every now and then but the aim wasn't quite right – memorandum to the bad guys… when you finally get a chance to shoot your weapon at Captain America, don’t aim at the shield… it just bounces off you see. And so it went. Really nothing new here, although the film's makers would like you to think there is. Don’t trust anyone. 5 out of 10.

Philomena - 2014 Oscar Nominee for Best Picture

What is Philomena? None of us common folk (didn’t make it to the Sundance festival again this year dang it) would know. Do we go to a show with this title? Take a look at the theater poster above... that’s not doing much for us either. Nobody’s exclaiming to their buddy after gazing on that advertisement that “they’ve just got to see this one.” But choose the most boring looking film on the marquee and you’ve probably got the one with the most weight - sometimes you’re a better person for seeing it. I think this is the case with Philomena. A few others think so too… it’s been nominated for four Oscars in this years Academy Awards including best picture.  

Philomena is a 70 year old Irish women who has kept a secret for a very long time. The film is based on the true story of Philomena Lee (The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by journalist (Martin Sixsmth)  who, as a pregnant teenager, is exiled by her ashamed father to a type of convent known as a Magdelene Laundry - institutions that had been established at the time ostensibly to house “fallen women”. There Philomena labors and in return receives shelter and care during her pregnancy. The convent’s nuns deliver her baby son but she is forced to give up all parental rights. At 3 years of age her son is taken away by an American family as Philomena watches from afar - gone without trace. All this, she is told, a penance for her grave sin. 

She reveals her secret nearly 50 years later to her daughter who connects with an un-employed journalist she hopes can tell her mother’s story and help with the search for her son. This links Philomena, played with expected perfection by Dame Judi Dench (M of recent bond films) with journalist Martin Sixsmith played by comedian Steve Coogan (Night at the Museum, Tropic Thunder). They form a magnificent odd couple - the simple, naive (maybe), and faithful Philomena juxtaposed with the educated, jaded, and agnostic Sixsmith. Dench’s performance is poignant - never over the top. Coogan is sharp but not overbearing. 

Yes, Philomena is sentimental, it is a tear jerker… but of course it is, it’s about a mother’s worse loss - how can it not be? But the sentiment is heartfelt - the kind that feels real because it is something close to what we’ve all felt - loss and understanding - at some time. So don’t let the odd name and lack of hype keep you away from this one - you’ll be a better person for seeing it. Ok, maybe you wont be but at least you’ll feel something. 8 out of 10.

Enders Game - Coming to DVD in February

I read the book - Orson Scott Card’s Nebula and Hugo Award winning novel - back in 85. I’ve read a lot of science fiction, before and since, and I still put Enders Game near the top of the best list. Card’s concepts back then were fresh and engrossing… and disturbing – children bred, filtered, and trained to lead the human race in a war against an alien force, waged through what is effectively an elaborate video game. But it has taken so long for Ender to reach the big screen that many of its key points may now seem old hat. Some of Card’s themes, such as push-button, virtual war, are now real life. Others, like the story’s prepubescent battle school, have been duplicated in more recent pop literature like the Hunger Game series. But Ender’s story still carries weight and although the film does not have enough time to do more than touch the surface of some of Card’s more complex statements, it’s still worth experiencing.

Ender’s world is a future earth that has narrowly survived an invasion by bug-like aliens and is now in a state of heightened paranoia over, what is assumed to be, an inevitable second attack.  The planet’s youth - intuitive, malleable, and unbiased by long-evolved and tried strategies - have been found to be the best suited to plan or improvise unanticipated battle strategies and lead the world’s forces in a preemptive first-strike against the bug nation. Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfied) is a “third”. Although the film does not spend much time on this concept, one can intuit that earth’s families are generally limited to two children and that Ender’s allowed birth had much to do with a bloodline that promises a potential battle leader. His siblings have both been in and out of the same battle-training program that Ender is now starting as a pre-teen. His sister washed out because she was too companionate, his brother was on the other side… booted because he displayed overly violent tendencies. Ender seems to have both pieces in his make up and he battles throughout his training and ascension to command to understand and balance both. He confesses this core paradox of his story to his sister while contemplating his role in this ultimate battle - 

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.”

Butterfield (Hugo) is well cast as Ender – slowly convincing the audience, as his character does his peers, that he is something special… a standout. Harrison Ford, as Colonel Hyrum Graff, the head of the selection and training program, seems out of place early in the film but revs up nicely as the Colonel becomes obsessed over the possibility that Ender might be “the one”.  Ben Kingsley is also good as Ender’s mentor but Nonso Anozie’s doughy battle-school Drill Sergeant Dap strikes fear into no one.

Enders Game is a handsome film, shining in the battle-room training skirmishes and the final remote control engagement. The film is a generally faithful, although limited, presentation of Card’s outstanding novel and nicely balances the glint of its sci-fi environment with the core questions of the cost of victory and if it really matters how we win. 7 out of 10