Movies

Movie Review: ‘The Band’s Visit’

imageI wish MrsDoF hadn’t been too busy rolling balls of yarn to go to the movies with me.  Sometimes a guy just can’t get a date to save his life.

I saw The Band’s Visit this evening at the historic Normal Theater.  It’s a 2007 story about an Egyptian police band travelling to give a concert at an Arab culture center in Israel.  They get on the wrong bus and end up stranded in the wrong town; a town in the middle of nowhere with no hotel.  Locals take them in for the night.

It’s a very different kind of film from the American movies I’m used to. I went because I have never seen a full-length Israeli film, know very little about life in Israel, and have very little context for Arab poetry or music.  There’s no ‘action’, no politics and very little religion. It’s character-driven, quiet, and a quite unadorned look at the lives of people in the Israeli town, and in the Egyptian band.  The characters once had dreams, they’re lonely, grieving, impatient, defeated or self-important, and the story, to the extent there is one, is in how they behave when thrust together.  It has some moments where the whole theater filled with laughter, and at least one moment where you’d best have a hankie.  At least, I needed one when the band leader explains to the beautiful restaurant owner what happened to his wife and son.

Oddly enough the film was rejected for an Oscar in the ‘foreign films’ category because it had ‘too much English’ in it.  Though, if Egyptians and Israelis needed to communicate, that’s the language they have in common…

Posted by George on 05/03/08 at 09:15 PM
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Movie Review: Lars and the Real Girl

MrsDoF and I went to the historic Normal Theater this evening to see the comedy movie Lars and the Real Girl (not yet released on DVD).  I am hard-pressed to think of another movie as original as this one.

Lars (played by Ryan Gosling) is a 27-year-old man who lives in his brother’s garage.  He holds down a job, is kind to others, and though he is extremely shy, people do like him.  But they don’t know that he is so badly wounded inside that even the touch of another person, however kind or gentle, causes him pain.  He wears multiple layers of clothing for protection.  He cannot hug.  It is difficult for him even to shake hands or look another person in the eye.

When a porn-addicted office-mate shows Lars a website that sells unusually realistic sex dolls, he secretly orders one.  But not for the usual purpose.  Instead, Lars invests in the lifeless mannequin an emotional reality as his new friend from Brazil.  Her name is “Bianca”.  Her mother died when she was born - just like Lars.  She is very religious, like Lars.  She cannot walk and does not speak much English. 

His brother (Paul Schneider) and sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer) are horrified to learn that he actually believes she is alive.  In the months that follow, they and all their friends, and the entire rural community, receive a crash course in delusional mental illnesses, and in compassion.  The psychiatrist (Patricia Clarkson) advises Lars’ brother and sister-in-law to play along with his delusion, so he can work out what he needs to.  His co-workers, and the rest of his church community also pitch in, reluctantly at first, when it is made clear to them that this may be the only path Lars can take out of his suffering.

And his brother learns that he holds the key to Lars’ pain.

It is a Christian theme that redemption is possible by sharing in the suffering of others.  I have seen this play out in actual rural churches, and it does in Lars’ church.  Their kindness, and that of the community, is the only part of the story that requires any suspension of disbelief, but the effort does not go unrewarded. 

Every movie asks a somewhat improbable question, such as “What if an empire and the rebellion against it spanned a galaxy?” The improbable question for Lars might be; “What if people had as much compassion for the mentally ill as they do for the physically ill?” The movie is billed as a comedy, and the audience laughed a lot.  But I didn’t, and when Lars is convinced that Bianca is dying, and he baptizes her, no one else in the theater did either.

There were a thousand ways for this movie to have gone wrong, but it didn’t.  Instead it is original and funny and touching.  So you needn’t look for it at the Oscars - they just skip over movies like this in favor of something with more explosions.  See it if you get the chance. 

Notes:

  • Movie Website
  • Yes it’s true, I’m a godless heathen.  But from various life experiences, I can speak reasonably fluent ‘Christian’.
  • Other themes in the movie:  Sometimes honesty is not the best policy, Forgiveness, ‘Let he who is without sin...’, Definition of manhood, and more.

Posted by George on 01/12/08 at 10:28 PM
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Movie Review: Ratatouille

MrsDoF and I saw the Disney/Pixar film Ratatouille at the Historic Normal Theater this evening.  You know the story: a rat with a culinary gift becomes the master chef at a French restaurant.  Since I couldn’t figure out how the story was supposed to work, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. 

I was surprised to find that it did work, was funny, and engaging, and very literate, and I liked it.  (I should have known, co-directed by Brad Bird.) If your kids watch it, it might even improve their vocabulary, too.  In the pattern of Incredibles, there was some some inspirational stuff but not too much.  And a bit of romance, but not too much.  Some violence, but not too much. And the animation was not only technically superb but lovingly artistic as one could hope.  Tasty!

Posted by George on 01/05/08 at 09:30 PM
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Mr. President?  Is that you?

It’s a chilly January night and MrsDoF is in the living room watching Disney’s 1991 movie, Beauty And The Beast.  I like the movie a lot, so I’ve been popping in to watch the cool scenes with her.  I especially like the part where the Beast saves Belle from the wolves.

Then I overheard the obnoxious bully Gaston, use a familiar phrase.  To MrsDoF’s annoyance, I came in and rewound the tape to catch a picture of it (the animation is between-frames but the closed-caption is clear).  Gaston vows to “Kill the beast!” and Belle, who has befriended the misshapen monster, says “I won’t let you!” To which Gaston replies; ”If you’re not with us, you’re against us!”

Sound like anyone we know? I think it’s a pretty good fit.

Posted by George on 01/01/08 at 10:55 PM
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2007 manhattan Short Film Festival

Local theaters are wonderful.  The Historic Normal Theater just showed the 2007 Manhattan Short Film Festival, which was followed by an international voting for the best one.  Our theater was the only one in Illinois hosting the event.

My favorites in order were Lines, Clooney, Boris’ Complete Book Of Rules, and The Prestidigitator.  Lots of people were very impressed by 1/100 of a second but I thought it pushed emotional buttons in a rather clumsy fashion. Feeling Lonely was a very obvious reworking of Rear Window and I Want To Be A Pilot was like the world’s most tedious Christian Children’s Fund commercial.  The others were so-so. 

Lines could be, and should be, made into a series for high-school kids.  You could do an awful lot with the main character they created and I think it would be massively popular. Unfortunately it has not hit YouTube yet. 

Posted by George on 09/29/07 at 09:16 PM
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Movie Review: The 5,000 Fingers Of Doctor T

I love Theodore Geisel (Doctor Seuss) and recently learned that he did a live-action movie in 1959.  Entitled The 5,000 Fingers Of Doctor T, it told the story of Bart Collins, a young boy tormented by a cultured but evil piano teacher named Robert Terwilliker.

(Waaaait a minute… there’s something awfully familiar about that.  Could there be an inspirational relationship to young Bart Simpson, and his cultured but evil nemesis, (Sideshow) Bob Terwilliger? Hmmm...)

Bart apparently has some sleep disorder; he falls asleep at inopportune times, dreaming that his piano instructor Doctor T is after him.  In the dream that encompasses most of the movie, his instructor founds the “Terwilliker Institute” to enslave 500 young boys to play the world’s largest piano (and not incidentally run a gigantic and very profitable racket).

Producer Stanley Kramer pulled out all the stops to translate the surreal world of Doctor Suess to 3-dimensional reality.  I imagine that stratospheric costs prevented another live-action Suess flick from being made until special effects could be produced digitally. 

The sets, lighting, choreography, and musical numbers are simply astounding.  The orchestral number (performed in a dungeon with fanciful instruments that only Doctor Suess could possibly invent) is wonderful but impossible to describe.  The movie does run a bit slow for my Die Hard conditioned movie sensibilities but heck, it was made in 1959.

This movie was a lot of fun.  I’m going to have to watch it a couple more times to catch everything.  You can get your own copy on Amazon.

SPOILER ALERT below the fold

Continued...

Posted by George on 08/26/07 at 09:45 PM
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I finally got around to seeing that movie everyone was going on about a couple years ago (Vendetta)

I like movies, but I don’t watch many of them and I’m seldom in a hurry to see them as they come out. Last night we watched V is for Vendetta and in response to all the people who told me to watch it two years ago, yes it was pretty cool.  It takes place in the “near future,” where Agent Smith from those awful “Matrix” movies plays a masked avenger out to topple a brutal totalitarian regime that has taken over England.

The movie exhibits some parallels to our current world - the government manipulating fear of terrorism, a public swayed by government-connected TV commentators.  It is a very good story with good acting and some twists.

My favorite scene was where V enters the bedchamber of one of the scientists who ran the bioweapons lab where he was created.  Best I can remember:

“You’ve come to kill me?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God.”

The movie raises issues of the value of assassination over warfare; in England, V takes out the real bad guys one at a time while the United States endures another agonizing civil war. 

On a scale of bricks to fruit, I’d rate this movie “pretty darn entertaining”.

Posted by George on 08/12/07 at 08:09 AM
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Ingmar Bergman dies

Ingmar Bergman has died. 

I still have the movie poster from the first time (of several) I saw The Seventh Seal.  Damn, what a cool movie.  (And I enjoyed the tribute to it in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Last Action Hero.) Of his huge filmography I have only seen TSS, Winter Light, and Wild Strawberries.  But I only saw the others once each and while I remember enjoying them, not much else.

Posted by George on 07/30/07 at 07:25 PM
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“What we have here is a failure to communicate”

MrsDoF and I went to The Normal Theater for a night of big-screen classic cinema.  There are a lot of classic movies I’ve never seen, and sometimes that’s all to the good.  The Maltese Falcon, for example, has a huge reputation but I found it very disappointing.  So I didn’t have extremely high expectations of Cool Hand Luke.  But I was pleasantly surprised; this star-studded movie was definitely worth the time.

Briefly, Luke (Paul Newman) is a post-war ner’ do-well who gets himself sent to prison by a drunken act of vandalism.  But his unique personality earns him the admiration of his fellow prisoners and the enmity of the guards.  It turns out badly for him in the end… depending how you look at it.

I’m not usually good at recognizing literary/religious allegories, but this one was a bit more accessible than most.  The exact sequence is slightly scrambled, but there’s a baptism, disciples, miracles, the Romans, Gethsemane, Judas, Pilate, a crucifixion, and even a sort of resurrection.  The latter is exactly how I envision the resurrection of Jesus taking on the mythic proportions that it did. 

George Kennedy plays an illiterate thug who ends up as one of the disciples - Peter, I suppose, and then combining the role of the big fisherman’s denial with that of Judas, trying to save the messiah from the wrath of the Romans, by betraying him.  And… (this is as literary as you’ll ever see me get here in Decrepitland) I thought the crucifixion was when he was “broken” - and the ascension was when he was shot.  And it took place before the resurrection. 

We walked home talking about the movie, only to find our neighborhood in darkness.  Apparently the heat and rain, plus trees growing around the power lines, brought down our neighborhood. 

Anyone else seen Cool Hand Luke?  What did you think of it?

Posted by George on 06/17/07 at 09:12 AM
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Weather heating up, then cooling off abruptly

At 6:15 this morning, it was 78 degrees and getting hotter.  All day it’s been a powerful, hot, humid wind from the South.  Long about 1 or 2 am there should be a cold, dry air mass moving in from the North, colliding with the damp, hot, fast-moving mass.  And things might get interesting.  I’ll have a powerful flashlight and my clothes where I can lay hands on them in a hurry.

But in the meantime, my ghoulish sense of humor demands watching one of the most craptastic disaster movies of all time… Twister! written by everybody’s favorite med-school dropout climate-skeptwit novelist turned presidential advisor, Michael Crichton! Yeah, baby!  More movie cliches per minute and and a soundtrack that just can’t be beat! 

I especially like the part at the end where they survive an F5 tornado, unprotected, by strapping themselves to a pipe in the ground.  That’s so like the author who posited digging dinosaur DNA from fossil mosquitoes and having the resulting monsters eat a lawyer and an industrial spy.  But far more importantly, there’s Helen Hunt as the (way sexy but insane) obsessed scientist, in almost every scene.  Might have to scoop me up some chocolate ice cream.

UPDATE: next morning, looks like Iowa got off with no damage, and Illinois with some canceled flights, downed trees and snapped power lines, one fatality.  Nothing at all happened in Bloomington/Normal, which all but confirms my theory that State Farm has learned how to control the weather in a several-mile radius around their world headquarters.  Wisconsin had quite a few tornados.  From the looks of the NOAA satellite and radar though, you wouldn’t want to be in some parts of Missouri right now.  oh oh

Posted by George on 06/07/07 at 06:47 PM
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Movie Review: Shut Up And Sing

MrsDoF and I went to see Shut Up And Sing this evening, riding our bicycles downtown to the Historic Normal Theater. The movie tells the story of the US country band ”Dixie Chicks” as they navigated the rough public-relations waters following an unpopular comment made by one of their band members.  They faced almost total cessation of radio play, falling album sales, and even death threats.  (Imagine stepping on stage in a packed arena after you’ve received a specific threat that you’d be shot dead, that night, on stage, and after the police inform you that there’s simply no way to be sure no one smuggled in a gun.)

Basically it’s a documentary band movie, not a genre that I usually go see unless there are other compelling issues folded in.  The camera simply followed the band around during the period documented, and included footage of fans, protestors, and television pundits.  (At one point, Bill O’Reilly opines; “They’re callow, foolish women, who deserve to be slapped around.") Singer Toby Keith put out a CD with the Chicks’ lead singer Natalie Maines photoshopped in the arms of Saddam Hussein. (Natalie was not amused)

It’s an interesting story even just from the music-business perspective.  After becoming the biggest-selling female band in US history, the Chicks had to completely reinvent themselves for a new audience after the country music fan base dumped them.  It looks like they’ll be OK now.

I’m not a fan of the Chicks, but for a different reason than most.  For some people the unforgivable sin is blasphemy; for me, it’s mangling Landslide. wink But never mind that. What happened to the Chicks is an example of mob mentality, a dynamic with a long and dishonorable history.  From the crowd screaming; “crucify Him!” to the media frenzy over the Duke University LaCrosse players, it has always taken courage to say; “woah, slow down. Let’s think about this.” It’s all too easy to find yourself trudging up the hill to Golgotha alongside the one you’re defending.

I’ve had a lot of time to ponder this, watching our country torn apart by 9/11 and the Iraq war.  People from both sides get positively angry when someone suggests any debate should begin with common ground, but for example I share a lot of ideas and values in common with even the most fervent Bush supporter.  I love this country and feel our values are important to the world as a whole, and so do they.  We both would like to see Osama come to a bad end.  Neither one of us wants our country to make a serious mistake that would cost it prestige or power.  So the debate isn’t over who loves America, who is against the terrorists, or who wants to see Osama hang; we agree on all those things.  It’s over what that big mistake might be, over strategy, over the means to the ends we share.  It’s high time we understood that about each other, appreciated that about each other, and focused on the real debate instead of ripping each other.

The Dixie Chicks aren’t political scientists, or even particularly smart (in one scene, Maines calls her astrologer).  But as it happened they were right about the Iraq war.  It didn’t make us more secure, and it hurt our country, and the president is responsible for that.  Yet here’s this entertainment-industry story that grew out of it.  It’s a little depressing to think that our artistic tastes might be nothing more than an extension of our politics but the movie gives some sad evidence that it could be true. 

Posted by George on 04/28/07 at 08:58 PM
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Movie review: “Cars”

MrsDoF and I watched the movie Cars this evening.  It was visually beautiful, funny and touching in places, and pretty strange to boot.  It took a lot of imagination to come up with even a cartoon society where everyone’s a car.

‘Specially the plot, which has never before been attempted in the history of movies.  Get this: the hot-shot superstar is forced to slow down and discovers a better life from friendship and community.  Eh?  Eh?  Waddya think?  Have we got a best-seller, or what?

OK, it was Doc Hollywood.  But I liked that movie, too, and not even one of its characters was a talking car.  I recommend it for fun, or if you really like animation (which I do). Or if you like NASCAR, to which I must confess indifference (rather see Grand Prix or off-road racing.) Just for animated comparison, I give The Incredibles (review) a 9.5, and this movie about 7.  On a logarithmic scale.

My son just asked; “What would you give Ice Age?” Can I use fractional quantities less than 1 in a review? 

Posted by George on 12/29/06 at 09:52 PM
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To Kill A Mockingbird

MrsDoF and I went on a nice date last night, to the local Chinese restaurant for some excellent soup and eggrolls, then to The Normal Theater to see the 1962 adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

This is what we call a “great movie” not only because it is a compelling story beautifully filmed, directed, and acted, but also because it uplifts human values. 

The danger in watching a movie like this one is that it makes most of the drek oozing out of Hollywood today look like garbage.  But to be fair, most of the movies made in 1962 were probably crap, too.  Something this good just comes along once in a while.

Only suggestion I’d make to the Normal Theater volunteer staff is; the decent thing to do would be leave the house lights down for thirty seconds or so while the credits roll - to let viewers use their hankies in privacy. Both women and men cry at certain movies but men dislike anyone to know it. 

Posted by George on 11/12/06 at 01:24 PM
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Guest Blogger: Samuel L. Jackson

Hi, this is Samuel L. Jackson.  An hour ago I was just picking up some bald-head wax when this bald-headed white dude bumped into me and he recognized me from my recent movie, Snakes On A Plane.  Now he looked like a Decrepit Old Fool but we got to talking and next thing you know, he asked me to sit down at his laptop and write a “blog entry” for his web log.  He said he and a friend from work just saw the movie, and would I please write for him, just this once?

I said that sounded pretty boring but he said something about how I should talk about the “dysfunctional integration of alien species of serpentine vertebrates in aircraft interior ecology” or some crap like that, and I just thought I’d shine him on a little bit.  A guy that clueless deserves to be set straight, you know what I’m talking about?…

Continued...

Posted by George on 08/18/06 at 11:23 PM
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“An Inconvenient Truth” movie reivew
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
- Upton Sinclair

You wouldn’t think a movie about a politician giving a slide show could possibly be interesting.  But I saw An Inconvenient Truth on Thursday and darned if it didn’t turn out to be really well done and very interesting indeed…

As a side-note, it is the best PowerPoint presentation I have ever seen.  Being at a university, I’ve suffered through quite a few, most absolutely terrible.  But if you give presentations in your job, and if you use PowerPoint, I encourage you to see this movie to get an idea of how well it can be done.  (Yes, I know Gore uses Apple’s ‘Keynote’ but it is a very similar product.  The same principles would apply to either)

I now realize that much of my opinion about Al Gore was formed by things that other people said about him.  He was, after all, a science buff in a Senate dominated by lawyers and party loyalists.  And when he stepped in front of a camera, his handlers were coaching and prompting him so much that he really didn’t come through very well.  That all changes with this movie. 

If you have been following actual science about global warming (as opposed to popular media) you know by now that working scientists are pretty much in agreement on the reality and the cause. Gore does a wonderful job of cutting through the popular-media crap to bring this to the screen in an understandable form. 

He answers popular criticisms of global warming theory with data and clear exposition, rather than with invective and indignation.  Michael Moore could learn a lot from the ex-next.  On second thought, no; he probably couldn’t.  He would complain the rational approach was cramping his style.

Gore illuminates the comparison of loss, as in the way his family only quit growing tobacco after his sister died of lung cancer.  When something unimaginably awful is coming, and we know it, we just don’t want to face it and take action ahead of time.  So much easier to pretend that everything is OK.

He also clarifies exactly what we stand to lose.  A little more carbon dioxide, a few degrees warmer, so what?  Well here’s ‘so what’…

The movie ends on a hopeful note that while time is extremely short, a combination of several changes can reverse the increase in greenhouse gasses.  He also provides an example that - inexplicably - I had not thought of; the ozone layer.  Today our ozone layer is on the mend because the science was clear, governments acted, and the problem was solved. 

At the end of the movie, according to the newspaper review, he makes good use of the credits-rolling time.  But unfortunately (conditioned by years of boring credits) I had already left the theater when they began to roll.  No big deal; I will probably see it again. 

Commenters, please be sure to note if you have seen the movie.

Posted by George on 07/27/06 at 06:36 AM
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