Lights, Camera, Faith — Inspiration and Meaning in the Movies
Posted on February 21, 2009 at 8:00 am
The Lights, Camera … Faith! A Movie Lectionary
Fanboys
Posted on February 19, 2009 at 6:00 pm
C| Lowest Recommended Age: | Mature High Schooler |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG-13 for pervasive crude and sexual material, language and drug content |
| Profanity: | Strong and very crude language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, peyote trip |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Comic peril and violence, sad death |
| Diversity Issues: | None |
| Date Released to Theaters: | February 20, 2009 |
“Fanboys” has less of a sense of humor about its subjects than they do about themselves. It is so afraid of offending the demographic that it cannot decide if it is making fun of passionate fans of popular culture or making fan of everyone who is hasn’t spent hours debating the abilities of Boba Fett. Four high school buddies, now estranged, get together for one crazy mission — they want to break into George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch to get a look at the new “Star Wars” movie, “The Phantom Menace,” before anyone else. And the result is just another teen road trip movie, crammed with cameos and many many jokes about body parts and their functions, about mastery of minutiae and saying things like “It’s been parsecs since I’ve seen you” and name-checking things that are oh, so 1998 (Great big Palm Pilots! Chumbawamba!). And isn’t it hilarious that these guys don’t have girlfriends? Yeah, I didn’t think so, either.
The trailer gives away most of the movie’s best surprises including cameos from stars identified with a series of fanboy call signs. Billy Dee Williams is identified as Lando Calrissian, and Carrie Fisher is of course identified as Princess Leia. The real fanboys in the audience will also recognize Ray Park (Darth Maul) and will also appreciate the appearance of the now-indispensable slob comedy utility players Seth Rogan (in three parts), Danny McBride, and Jay and Silent Bob. There are some amusing confrontations between the “Star Wars” geeks and the Trekkers and Kristen Bell (whose brunette bob makes her look like Parker Posey) gives some snap to her lines and wears a Leia harem girl outfit. Someone needs to give the talented Pell James a better job. In her brief and thankless role as a Las Vegas “escort” she lights up the screen with obvious warmth and intelligence.
That is not enough to make up for way we keep getting pulled back to the four bland characters and even blander storylines (you think that conflicts will be addressed? is someone going to find true geek love? will we learn what life is all about?) at what passes for the heart of the movie. It could have been a lot of fun if they hadn’t cheesed it up with a character suffering from Movie Disease — you know, the one where you only have a short time to live but appear and act perfectly healthy — and another character who is struggling with whether he should “grow up” and behave responsibly. It is a shame that a movie about the people who are most passionate about edgy, imaginative stories is itself slipshod and formulaic.
Must Read After My Death
Posted on February 19, 2009 at 6:00 pm
A-| Lowest Recommended Age: | Adult |
| MPAA Rating: | Not Rated |
| Profanity: | Some strong language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | References to drinking and drugs |
| Violence/ Scariness: | References to emotional abuse, sad death |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
| Date Released to Theaters: | February 20, 2009 |
A generation ago the technology first became widely available to allow families to document their lives with home movies and audio recordings. The use of these artifacts has transcended the “can you believe I used to look like that” and “remember that trip” family viewings and provided the materials for extraordinary films like Capturing the Friedmans
Film-maker Morgan Dews is the grand-son of a woman named Allis, who left behind a suitcase of home movies, ten hours of dictaphone letters sent to her husband on his annual four-month business trips to Australia, and tapes recorded for herself or for therapists consulted by the family. And there was a file of tape transcripts and notes labeled Must Read After My Death.
That became the title of a film assembled from these recordings, opening today in New York and Los Angeles and available everywhere via Gigantic Digital. The haunting images of Allis, her husband Charley, and their children, Chuck, Doug, Bruce, and Anne flicker on screen as we hear the recordings. The juxtaposition is artfully done and utterly heart-rending, the cheery footage of children playing as we hear the family fall apart.
At first, the words fit the “Leave it to Beaver” images of life in the tony Connecticut suburbs of the 1950’s and 60’s as Allis and the children make records tell Charley how much they miss him and he responds by telling them he loves them. But then, so matter-of-factly we wonder if we hear it correctly, Charley tells Allis about his involvement with other women and even asks for her help. And by the time the recording device has switched to reel-to-reel magnetic tape, the kids are beginning to reflect the anguish at home. Halfway between a time capsule and a Cheever story, we see the particularly of this family’s dysfunction and disintegration but it is the elements of its era make it so powerful. The suffocating restrictions on Allis as she tries to find a way to hold onto a sense of herself at a time when therapists were handing out tranquilizers and telling her to let her husband be the boss. In one tape we hear her decide that while she would like to work it would be better for her son for her to stay home — for another ten years.
Movies like “Revolutionary Road” and “American Beauty” cannot come close to the art and authenticity of this one in portraying the tragedy behind the manicured lawns and shiny appliances of the suburbs. The urgency of Allis’ message to us — not “please” but “must read” — is most honorably discharged by her grandson and the story she left behind lets us hear the voice that was almost silenced.
If you like this, try: Capturing the Friedmans
Changeling
Posted on February 17, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Radiantly beatific, Angelina Jolie glows with mother love in bright red lipstick and a series of divine cloche hats as Christine Collins, a devoted single mother, in this fact-based drama directed by Clint Eastwood. In 1928 Los Angeles, while she was at work, her son Walter just disappeared. Months later, the police told her they had found him, but the boy they gave her was not her son. She was pressured by corrupt cops to accept the new boy as hers. When she persisted in pointing out that not only was this boy physically different from Walter but that his dentist and teacher were on her side, she was committed to a mental institution and told she could not leave until she dropped all efforts to prove that her son had not been returned.
Eastwood’s meticulous direction and the sheer outrageousness of the story make for absorbing drama, though the very strangeness of the underlying facts makes the material seem overpacked (the running time is almost two and a half hours) and its discursive unfolding diminishes the dramatic effect.
It is impossible not to bring Jolie’s public role as a devoted mother of six to her performance here. Once Hollywood’s most notorious wild child, Jolie has transformed her public persona into a sort of earth Mother Courage on behalf of her own multi-cultural brood and on behalf of all the world’s poor and neglected children with her work for the United Nations. All of that blends in to the ferocity she brings to this role, diminishing the power of the story. The stand-out performances here are Ryan as the indomitable inmate and Jason Butler Harner as the man who probably knows what happened to Walter.
An additional distraction is the effort to put three separate stories into one long drama. The first act is the boy’s disappearance and the horrifyingly absurd attempt to persuade Collins that another child is her son. The second is a “Snake Pit”/”One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” diversion after she is thrown into the state mental hospital, where she is subjected to abuse but meets another inmate (the always-outstanding Amy Ryan) whose honesty and courage helps sustain her hope. And then there is a third act, where Collins all but disappears as the crime drama plays out and we find out what happened to the boy and what happened to those responsible.
Flash of Genius
Posted on February 17, 2009 at 8:00 am
Americans do love our underdog stories and this one has the ingredients. There’s a David — an engineering professor named Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear), who had a “flash of genius” and invented a gadget that all the geniuses in Detroit had been trying to figure out — an intermittent windshield-wiper to provide better clarity of vision when driving in the rain. Jackpot, right? No, there’s also a Goliath, and no giant is bigger and no overdog is overdoggier than the Detroit auto industry, circa 1960’s. And it really happened. Kearns sued Ford Motor Company for stealing his idea and pursued them for decades, representing himself in court. When they offered him millions of dollars but refused to give him credit for the invention, he turned them down. Integrity and pride, those are important elements of the underdog story, too.
Director Mark Abraham gives the film a gritty authenticity, evoking the era without overdoing it. And he gives the story its grittiness, too, showing us the price Kearns and his family pay for his dedication and stubbornness. Lauren Graham is a pleasure as Kearns’ wife. No one on screen today does a better job of portraying an intelligent, warm, sexiness. Kinnear shows us Kearns’ honesty, stubbornness, pride, and vulnerability. The courtroom scenes are exceptionally well done.
If there’s a fine line between genius and insanity, there’s an even finer one between genius and obsession. This film is a thoughtful, sympathetic, but clear-eyed portrayal of what Kearns gained but also what he lost.