Tag Archives: DVD

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Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

“I represent the church every time I step into the courtroom, because I represent the people and the people are the church.” – Father Thomas Doyle in Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

Of course when Thomas Doyle utters this line deep into Alex Gibney’s deeply absorbing Mea Maxima Culpa, we know that he is an ordained priest, but one who has been representing victims in the Church abuse scandal, serving as expert witness.  The victims are every bit the members of the community as anybody else in the Church, but the organization – not the religion, but the corporation that appointed itself the keeper therein – failed them, with considerable evidence that “failed” ought not be a present tense term.  The media of course largely sidestepped this reality when covering the conclave naming Pope Francis – either sheepishly describing the scandal as a relic of the past, or just breezily neglecting altogether to focus on the flowing robes.

Father Lawrence Murphy was himself a member of the corporation, running the Saint John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee from 1950-1974.  Surrounding him were kids with a physical handicap obviously, and kids who depended on him profoundly (one considers that in the 1950s and 1960s, parents often did not understand or appreciate communication with special needs kids), and kids who were extremely vulnerable marks, if you turned out to be a predator.  Gibney follows four of these children (now grown of course – voiced by actors you all know, but so unobtrusive that you almost totally forget), and we hear their stories in their words.  Murphy abused the kids yes, but he also had established a system much resembling a fraternity.  Former abused students grow into trusted lieutenants, and often abusers themselves.  We hear one of the men talk about offering up somebody else for abuse on an offsite trip – it’s obviously horrible but better him than me.

These were the choices these students had, because they could not communicate with their parents or with other officials – and certainly with the School for the Deaf as the pillar of the community, who could believe them?  Rarely watching a movie have I ever had the sense of loneliness that I got from these stories.  How could the parents have been so blind to their children’s plights?  Where could these kids turn as their childhoods were being robbed from them?  It goes without much saying that these systems totally failed this most exposed population.  This was the stuff that stayed with me, and the strongest parts of Gibney’s film.  Certainly for others, the meticulous case that the Church knew all about these things etc etc etc is a big deal, but being from the Boston area, I knew all about this (hello, Bernard Law).  Where the film works best is a statement on how this failure felt on a human level.  It is a testament to the power of these stories that the simple stuff carries the movie and allows it to transcend some of Gibney’s overly cinematic touches and “dramatic reenactments”.  This is a tough but hopeful story – and one gets the final reckoning won’t take place anytime soon.

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Mad Men: Season 5 (SPOILERS!!)

“Are You Alone?”

Isn’t that always the case with Don Draper?  Since the former Dick Whitman deserted the War and reinvented himself, has there been anyone more alone?  In Mad Men, Don Draper has managed to excise his past – and Matthew Weiner has somehow managed to make the stunning secret which was this show’s undertow for two or three seasons to frankly not matter anymore.  Don has a wife he loves – maybe – and a good business.  For all of the steps we have walked with him, he should be happy – but when we leave him at the bar when the damsel asks him the above, he seems every bit the island he ever was.

Of course, this dramatic finish was just the last of what was a season full of set pieces, guignol gestures and dream sequences – so many “big” moments for a series which had spent four seasons building a reputation for tiny moments and the slow burn.  Hell, this was a show which spent two entire seasons building up to the central reveal of the series, and yet here we were with a trippy musical montage, one of the partners hanging himself and the partnership structure changing in a seedy (maybe) manner.  Is this the best of the five seasons?  That is hard to say, but it is the “biggest”.

  1. Feminism has been one of the strongest threads throughout the series, and as the 1960s are veering towards increased liberation – the possibilities for women have opened up.  Obviously the glass ceiling was as thick as ever – but as we see Peggy and Joan deal with their lives, there is the chase of something better.  Peggy has continued to be the best creative, and we’ve seen her rise from secretary to Don Draper’s most trusted idea person – so when she wants the recognition and a level of respect commensurate with her performance, it is startling to see Don cut her down to size so cruelly.  So when she announces her departure from the firm – it is a lovely triumphant moment for her, even if her mentor will never fully appreciate it.
  2. Joan of course, has a much harder decision as the chance to close on Jaguar comes on her doorstep.  Life is complicated – with her husband divorcing and without a ton of prospects for being able to provide for her child, she needs more than possibilities.  She is an interesting contrast with Peggy – a woman who has a lot more experience in the “man’s world”, and while being regarded for her looks is not something she is happy with, at some level do what you gotta do.
  3. Betty Francis (not prominently featured this season with January Jones’ own pregnancy) of course remains a woman much more at home in the older paradigm who has sort of bought into sort of a pre-feminist version of things.  It makes for the same tension which has driven her for the entirety of the series – a woman who sees liberation but is trapped both by society’s expectation, but her own co-opting of those expectations into her worldview.  It manifests itself as jealousies and obsessions and trying to ruin Don’s relationship with his children.
  4. Indeed the tension between the old fuddy duddies and the hippie counterculture permeates throughout.  We have people like Peggy who are trying to see a new way forward (a way that her mother clearly is not on board with), but we also have the partners like Don and Roger who have been the big guns in the room for years – and is moving haphazardly into a world where there might not be so much control.  Sure the LSD and grass are cool, but it is fun to see Don not understand the Beatles.  But these are fairly shallow experience, and when we see the issues Don has with a much more liberated wife, as well as how quick he is to hold Peggy’s career back, we see how uncomfortable these white men are with things shifting, even a little.
  5. But at the end of the day, what we see is the fascinating dichotomy between what others see in Don’s life and Don’s own angle on his situation.  We see Pete Campbell, who wants what Don has and sees some sort of ideal life to aspire towards.  There is the house in Westchester, but the yearning to cheat (hello, Rory Gilmore!) and the itch to have a place in the city.  Pete surrounds himself with the spoils of a certain life, but in Vincent Kartheiser’s portrayal, you can see that Don’s life is still the ideal.  Peggy of course has been mentored by Don, and wants to take his mentoring and venture out on her own.  Everybody wants to be like Don – except for Don himself, who is adrift during most of this season.  He is less interested in work, more detached from his wife’s career as she turns down advertising for acting.  He is a man going through the motions – he doesn’t seem vested in his outcomes.  He doesn’t even seem to get energy from his children.

Overall this season was a treat – and the first season I saw in real time.  The show continues to develop the characters – and Matt Weiner has to be complimented for not leaning on Dick Whitman, and forcing Don Draper in a more interesting direction.  Don Draper has seemed  like some sort of male ideal in earlier seasons, but we see a character now that perhaps we are not supposed to actually be rooting for.  But we have seen his lot so clearly.  I keep thinking he has been lying to himself – those times in California seem like the only place where he has been truly at ease.  Has he phoned in the rest of his life?  How sad would that be.

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Hugo

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo might be the single sweetest movie he has ever made.  In a world where various special interest factions – conservatives, hippies, whomever – complain about the filth and chum in Hollywood, too often family entertainment is merely content with being innocuous and uninterested with actually being worth seeing.  Obviously, Pixar has made a great living providing that combination of quality and wholesomeness, thus sticking out like a sore thumb in this entertainment wasteland – while by contrast this has not been Scorsese’s usual beat.  That said, this is the greatest living American filmmaker we are talking about – so that he accomplishes so much when he puts his stamp on a family film and special effects fantasy, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living in Paris of the 1930s, helping fix and run the clocks at the train station that his uncle is in charge of.  His father, seen in flashback and rather incredibly resembling Jude Law (just Jude Law as someone’s dad – come on now), also had the fixing stuff bug, and prior to his death was working on reviving an automaton he had got from a museum.  Since his father’s death, Hugo has evaded being sent to an orphanage – in particular by the dogged Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) – by living in the walls and sneaking about.  Hugo subsists by stealing, and by the movies.

The train station, and Scorsese’s Paris is a masterwork of the imagination.  The film filters and the way it is shot – this is not an animated film and these are actual actors, but somehow the filming has a certain heightened reality more akin to a movie like The Polar Express.  Into this hyperreality, Scorsese peoples his Paris with characters such as the aforementioned Inspector, the shopkeeper Lisette (Emily Mortimer), and the grumpy guy Georges Meiles who runs the toy store (Ben Kingsley).  Meiles in particular makes things difficult for Hugo as he puts Hugo to work fixing stuff at his store.

Meiles is a grumpy guy, but not one without a heart.  He and his wife have taken in their goddaughter Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), and when Hugo meets Isabelle, she shows him the wonder of the library while he shows her the wonder of movies.  Little does Hugo know of course, that Georges Meiles (both here and the real one) is one of the earliest directors of cinema – you have probably seen is silent short about a trip the moon.  And indeed there are secrets abound which bind these characters together – as the movie evolves from a wondrous fantasy into a celebration of the very building blocks of movies themselves.

I would not dream of spoiling the plot much further aside from pointing out how carefully Scorsese reveals the extent of the Kingsley character’s complexity, and how particular Scorsese and Cohen are with the Inspector.  He is not a villain in any sort of way – just a guy with a particular sense of order. He thinks he is doing the orphans a favor.  What we get at the end of the day is one of Scorsese’s very best films right at the time when we might not have been expecting one.  I was surprised how affected I was by the ending, when some justice and redemption are handed out.  Will kids like this plot, especially as it gets into the cinema part?  I don’t know – I’d think so, but to paraphrase Cohen when he was promoting this film, Scorsese is not one who is focus testing these movies.  He continues to be among the rare directors who is trying to dare greatness every time out.

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Mad Men: Season 1 (SPOILERS!!!)

As Season 1 – the season that earned the first of four consecutive Emmy awards – of Mad Men closes, we see Don Draper sitting on the landing of the stairway in his Westchester County home, wondering where things are headed.  At this point, we know that Draper has a complicated, difficult past which he has been trying to put behind him but with only limited success.  The mystery hinted at in the third episode when his own co-worker noted that nobody knows much of his past, have started to crack open, yet when I finished with the first season, Don’s mystery is far less interesting than the show’s portrayal of the challenges for women and feminism in the 1960s.

As everyone knows by this point, AMC’s flagship series covers the exploits and goings-on at Sterling and Cooper, an advertising agency trying to compete in the very competitive environs of Madison Avenue.  Draper (Jon Hamm) is the creative head.  The agency of course, is the sort of boys club that seems entirely typical of a not-particularly-reformed-yet era.  The women in the secretarial pool are doing the archetypal secretarial things such as takings calls telling people “Mr. Campbell, call on line 2″ and whatever – but also are looked at by the account executives as frankly no more than skirts.  We know during this era, feminism and civil rights will start to rise – but we’re not there yet – and so what is left is this paradigm.  The show is particularly stark and hurtful in the things that some of the guys say – when critics accuse the show of misogyny, I can’t say I do not understand the criticism – but it so clearly sees the pickle the ladies are in.  Against this backdrop the show gives us three examples of women relating to this world – one who exploits the system, one who is trying to transcend the system, and one who is being crushed by it.

In some ways, while Hamm and Draper get the plaudits – Elisabeth Moss as Peggy Olson is the real hero of the first season, her story is certainly the one that evolves the most.  She starts the season as the new addition to secretarial pool and Don Draper’s secretary.  She is trying to get ahead, and to really make the most of herself – not just (if at all) trying to get her MRS degree.  She is shown the ropes by Joan Harris the buxom (only because I can’t think of a more emphatic word, her dresses are straining to hang on to her) head secretary.  Joan seems awfully sophisticated, living in the city, tagging the partner, and oscillating her hips in a way that seems more or less entirely intentional.  I am not sure if the liberated female has appeared at her doorstep – indeed her obliviousness to her roommate is a clue – but she is clearly operating within this male dominated system.  Her eyes are wide open, but her reality is a very catch-my-man-ish one.  Her advice to Peggy is almost entirely in the vein of looks and knowing her place – it would be kind of offensive in 2011, but in 1960 it is merely good pragmatism.

For Peggy, it takes a while.  Her attempts at trying to be a skirt earlier, but then her revelation that she could really be something on par with the account exec assholes who say things about her and her fellow secretaries behind their backs is one of the triumphs of the show.  She has to fight so hard, but when she has her victory at work it is one of the nicest moments of the season.  Of course as we leave the season, she has some tough decisions ahead of her, as her choice of career vs domestic is put in stark relief.

Betty Draper, Don’s wife, has made the housewife choice.  She is trying to fit into the 1960s model of a good wife, making roasts, taking care of the children, and giving up her share of the meat when the partner at her husband’s firm decides to invite himself over for dinner.  But she is not comfortable – we see this with tremors in her hands and with sudden odd releases of tension, such as her reaction to a threat to her dog from a neighbor.  January Jones’ work here is either brilliant invisible or incompetent – but she shows a wooden woman, or a woman who has been taught to not have feelings other than standing by her man.

The theme of the women go even further – as the differentiation in the male characters is very much in terms of how women serve in their lives.  We know most of the account executives are boorish, but Don Draper some how is not.  He is not without guilt, especially a couple of really grievous missteps, but he does hear Peggy’s ability to do things, and resists her overtures to be a good secretary.  Pete Campbell, a jealous account exec, is boorish, but the boorishness that comes from the frustration at being too nice a guy to be the asshole that he wants to be (if you know what I mean – it is more obvious if you watch the program).  The show covers all of this territory deftly – within the context of the 1960s patriarchal world and spectacular art direction that really makes it seem like the 1960s. (I am reminded in this respect as Far from Heaven)  Overall – definitely enough here to dive in to season 2.

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Forgetting Sarah Marshall

From the beginning in his naked, pathetic, sorrowful breakup with the woman in the film’s title, Peter Bretter, as played by Jason Segel is one of the biggest sad sacks in movie comedy history.  When Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) walks out of his life, he is crestfallen – and many other synonyms.  Sure, he tries to go on dates – he meets other girls, but somehow it ends up with Peter crying pathetic tears – as Dan Patrick might put it, drooling the drool of regret into the pillow of remorse.  So Peter tries to go to Hawaii to forget about things – perhaps to be able to get out of this rut.  But alas, when he arrives, somehow Sarah and her rock star fiance are in the same hotel.

Of course this is all the setup for a formula movie, and in its way, as written by Segel and directed by Nicholas Stoller, Forgetting Sarah Marshall IS a formula comedy.  It is also the funniest of the movies to roll out of the Judd Apatow hit factory, and perhaps the best.  While the film lacks the sweetness and higher emotional stakes of The 40-Year Old Virgin, it amply compensates with one accomplished comic character and performance after another.  The credit has to be shared between Segel’s screenplay, which gives this gallery of players such good dialogue and material to work with, and the actors themselves who bring exactly the right note time after time.  Actors over and over again seem to indicate that comedy is at least as hard an art form as performing drama, and this film provides evidence through and through.

As we pick up where we left Peter, yes, Sarah is in the same hotel with her new fiance, the rock star Aldius Snow (Russell Brand).  Snow is your archetypal clueless rock star with his tics insecurities and ego – he is like a creature from another planet.  Russell Brand of course took this character and made another movie based on him (Get Him to the Greek), and he is very very funny.  Obviously the song he sings in the movie is ridiculous – but if it wasn’t for the lyrics, it would be a totally plausible rock song.  Indeed, Aldius Snow is a totally plausible rock star – and of course that is why he is so hilarious.

This development does nothing to help Peter to move on from the Sarah relationship.  However, the resort is much more than just them.  There is the lovely woman behind the desk Rachel (Mila Kunis), and the weirdly chatty bartender, and the spaced out surf instructor (Paul Rudd, of course walking through), and a waiter who when a great star like Aldius Snow is in his presence, does what one suspects many waiters do.  All of these characters are given quirks and depth – they all have chances to be funny and quirky.  The resort becomes its own microcivilization – Peter soon becomes not just a guest but a friend of these people.  All of the actors in these roles bring the exact tone, whether it be luminousness with Kunis, Jonah Hill’s awkward creepiness or even Kristen Bell in the thankless position as the pill (Segel’s screenplay is wise with her and gives her more humanity than just being an evil harridan).  Even skype conversations between Peter and his brother (Bill Hader) are written perfectly.

At the head of the class is Segel himself as Peter Bretter.  Bretter, as the first paragraph of this tome would indicate, really needs a break.  His sad sack act, especially as a counterpoint to all the happier folks around him in Hawaii, is crucial – and Segel is walking a tightrope here.  He has to take this character, drive him as far down towards pathetic as possible without compromising the likability for us as an audience to root for him.  His Eeyore act is what gives the movie its essence – a place for all these forces of nature to work.  He is a terrific straight man here, and as the movie works through its inevitable steps, it never stops being funny and effective, right down to the realization of Peter’s career dreams.

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Chop Shop

Chop Shop is probably the least of Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani’s first three films.  Of course, being the worst Bahrani feature film at this point is kind of like being the dumbest Nobel winning chemist – the company is pretty lofty.  The first paragraph of this review is probably the only bad thing I can say about the movie.  After all, between this film, Goodbye Solo and Man Push Cart - SOMEBODY had to finish last.  Even in its bronze medal status, Chop Shop is a demonstration of Bahrani’s phenomenal gift for capturing life as it is lived by people just like us – even if we would never pay them notice otherwise.  Of all American directors, he – in just three major features (major being getting proper releases – not big ones) – is turning out to be the natural, creating realism with an almost offhand sort of ease.

This film centers around Alejandro, or Ale, a 12-year old apparent orphan, working by his wits to get by.  There are no parents, just him and his 16-year old sister.  They live in a room inside a local auto mechanic’s shop.  During the day, Ale is trying to keep them afloat with various sorts of schemes.  He steals hubcaps, he resells candy on the subway.  In his own way – he could be a character out of Oliver Twist or something.  He has certainly had to grow up quickly.  Indeed, a scene where he scolds his sister for leaving bottles around is striking – it shows a toughness in the kid that belies his kid-ness.  He is the man of whatever house they have put together.  Even at this age – you get a sense of the stakes that he is facing.  He dreams of owning a taco truck – not one of the hipster food trucks I talk about incessantly, but just one of those stands you pass by in any city.

In a way describing the plot is useless, because the triumph of this movie – much as in with Man Push Cart - is how Bahrani establishes a sense of time and place.  With shots and editing that are almost completely invisible – Bahrani effortlessly shows exactly how Ale and his cohorts get by.  We see encounters, we see how a young woman might choose to make additional income, and it all makes sense.  It’s not punched up.  We get involved in Ale’s life – not so much as a rooting interest as almost a documentary viewer.  The performances by the actors are so natural and unaffected that it feels like we are watching life unfold, and the artifice of the “movie” go away.  Yes, there is a plot and Ale’s dreams and his own approach to getting by are all challenged.  However, it never feels like plot machinery – that is always the case with Bahrani – we are looking on these lives.  It is so specific – that if we did not see the Chrysler Building in the background – it could be a documentary of another civilization.  In a sense though, it IS – a view of a world white collar world just doesn’t see.  Bahrani sees this world and these people with such clarity and love.  It is a thrill to see a filmmaker who is destined for true “people will remember him” greatness in his youth.  I can’t wait for what he will give us next.

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An Inconvenient Truth

In some ways the environmental battle, and the battle against global warming, or whatever you want to call it is a bit of a fool’s errand.  After all, the planet does not need saving – it was there well before we were and will be there well after we die off.  Indeed, only when the sun explodes – and it will – does the earth as a biosphere, have any real problems.  Also, there is a pretty significant likelihood that the human species is going to go extinct without a key mutation or three taking place, although hopefully that happens well after our time is up.  (although us being the chosen ones for The End would be kind of neat)

However, while we are here, we might as well try putting off extinction for as long as possible.  The phenomenon of global warming seems pretty airtight.  That it is even controversial is actually pretty amazing.  Al Gore has made this his life’s mission since losing the 2000 election – of course a version of the speech he has given comprises Davis Guggenheim’s 2006 Oscar winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.  What is particularly impressive about Guggenheim’s film is how it takes what should have been a very very dry format – basically, one dude lecturing – and makes it a very very entertaining engaging piece.

The film uses some fairly conventional wrap-arounds to make sure we are not just staring at Gore lecturing the entire time.  We get cuts of Gore talking about how he came to this as his self-chosen vocation – some behind the scenes thoughts about why he is doing this speech.  This places some human interest in Gore’s mission and effectively breaks up the natural chapters in his oratory.  Gore himself is not a dynamic speaker.  He is miles more emotional than he was as a Vice President or as Presidential candidate, but it is largely still a recitation of facts.  However, the film’s use of graphics keeps the words lively.  Gore uses gigantic graphics, so as we see the charts of temperatures in Antarctica since time infinitum the recent trend is staggering.

Indeed, the temperature trends are ALL staggering.  The climate changes are real – it seems fairly bulletproof.  The idea that there is a controversy seems to be driven by forces that are not working with pure science in mind – whether they be think tank funded people or whatever.  Indeed the peer review stats Gore cites are amazing.  There is a lot of money in denying the problem.  The film with its stark examples and graphs and exhibits, show tons of anecdotal circumstantial evidence, too much to ignore.

Where the film is weak is that there is a lot of evidence, but the human connection to it is largely a matter of faith.  Gore mentions it once, but the movie sidesteps the “what do I have to do with it” question.  It gets a bit more beyond the political ambitions of a blog like this to speculate on the policy.  However, as a film, An Inconvenient Truth forces us to stare at global warming and the implications of what is happening.  Are we the cause?  Who knows – but it feels like we have to be part of the solution, if for no other reason than to put off the inevitable extinction of the species.

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Toy Story 3

Full disclosure: I missed the earliest scenes of this

Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3 takes us back into the world of Woody and Buzz – a full fifteen years after they exploded on the scene with what was the Dr. J foul line jam of animated movies.  It is amazing that it has been fifteen years since Pixar showed us the possibilities of computer animation, with Buzz leaping and flipping, and his plastic helmet actually showing a reflection.  For those who were taken away by films that stretch the possibility of showing the imagination on the screen, the first movie was a breakthrough.

The third movie in the series, and hopefully the last from a quit-while-your-ahead perspective matches the visual glory of the previous features – the animation is flat out brilliant – but shifts the focus away from the Andy-toy relationship and sends the toys into a fairly routine prison caper sort of deal with a entirely too long ending and a few curious messages to be delivering your children.  Indeed the film feels a little bit dark for smaller kids – especially when we are seeing the toys ready to go off to toy heaven.

Andy of course at some point – has to go to college and break up his Christopher Robin idyll – and so the toys can’t be Andy’s toys forever.  Woody – long Andy’s favorite – seems awfully invested in going with Andy to college, probably unaware of the impact that he might have on Andy’s “college experience”.  The toys were ticketed to the attic, but by mistake end up being sent to a daycare facility.  The daycare facility seems like a step up for the toys.  There are no shortage of kids to play with them, and let’s face it, Andy probably had not been the most attentive toy user in recent years.  They get shown around by a bear named Lotso, his assistant who seems an awful lot like a baby doll and a guy named Ken who really loves clothes – no points for figuring out the inspiration.  The movie has fun with the characters.  Woody is not impressed with this new life – and he still feels he has to be with Andy, showing a dedication to his master that evokes a bit of the Underground Railroad in reverse possibly.

Of course the toys discover that life is not all that peachy at the new place.  They are placed in the room with the littlest kids – who play rough with the toys.  Suddenly, Andy’s life seems better – and the other folks like Lotso seem to have better gigs.  Through a series of plot developments that are fairly easy to anticipate, suddenly the toys are being held captive, as Lotso runs the place like Warden Norton did at Shawshank.  From here the movie sort of evolves into your standard caper movie – Woody ends up on the outside and learns of the truth of the daycare center, comes back to lead a rescue, and a chase puts them face to face with a garbage collector and incinerator, where the sort of deus ex machina takes place which would be infuriating in a more serious movie.  But come on, did you expect the toys to end up slaughtered?

The movie has fun with its targets – it toys with Ken’s sexuality without quite ever going “there”, and the conveniences of Mr. Potato Head’s facial construction.  At one point in the movie Buzz gets converted into a Spanish speaking mode when his batteries are rest – and the unanticipated consequences of bringing a Latino hero in are quite funny and almost certainly over the heads of much of the target audience.  However, when the movie stares into the incinerator, it is a little scary, and possibly too much for little kids to deal with.

The movie’s most interesting aspects though, are it’s rather overtly bourgeois view of normalcy.  Woody’s desire to be owned again, the negative portrayal of day care centers relative to toys, and ultimately Andy’s decision to donate the toys at the end (who he donates them too) provide some curious messages about “normal” lifestyles and whatnot.  Clearly I am thinking too much about this, but it was weird – especially during an ending which was a solid 20 minutes longer than necessary.  Also, off topic, Andy might be something of a loser – but I still don’t understand how Christopher Robin got along in the later adolescent years either.  A bad day of Pixar at the end of the day beats a good day of most every other studio, but ultimately Toy Story 3 is an amusing but forgettable piece in the studio’s canon.

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The Blind Side

Oh could I list the reasons to hate The Blind Side?  First of all it’s cliched – the entire movie is predictable.  Second, it’s patronizing – one of the quaint 1950s sort of tomes of some magical white person rescuing a poor helpless black kid – Diff’rent Strokes on the big screen without the intentional jokes.  Third, it is a vanity project for a scenery chewing performance by Sandra Bullock – where the screenplay gives chances for the empty headed men in the film to look at that spunky broad.  This is the sort of thing that Julia Roberts usually corners the market on.  Fourth, it doesn’t seem like the character of Michael Oher, you know, the dude who came from homelessness to football glory, had any personality traits.  I was left with this film knowing what HE thought about what all these white folks were doing.  Fifth, it’s a sports movie, and most of those aren’t very good.  Sixth, Tim McGraw is the patriarch which reminds me of country music, and well that makes me puke in my mouth.

HOWEVER, with all the schmaltz, and all the patronizing racial values, with the knowledge that this movie is really about Sandra Bullock doing her best Erin Brockovich and telling all these people where to stick their non-belief, John Lee Hancock’s movie works.  My God, it works in the sort of way it was intended, and before I shoot myself, I have to be honest about the fact that the movie is entertaining and that I did root for Michael Oher even if he himself did not give me any reason to.  I have to be honest about the fact that Sandra Bullock’s character’s telling-off thing did get me rooting for her, despite seeing the machinery behind it.  The simplistic black is bad, white is good, rescuing poor Michael from the hood thing – the checking the box of every racial stereotype that gets shattered by the film’s self congratulatory nature – all are features that make this kind of junk.  However, the movie is effective, and I hope I have confessed my sin of taste fully.

I guess the question becomes why can this movie – with its schmaltz and hackneyed ideas work on me while a vehicle like Eat Pray Love goes right to my puke reflex.  I think perhaps that it might have much to do with the protagonists themselves.  Julia Roberts’ Elizabeth Gilbert – as the movie portrays her – does not have a visible crisis of conscience.  Aside from the opportunity to have middle age ladies hearts aflutter, her mission seems rather narcissistic.  On the other hand Leigh Anne Tuhoy, the Sandra Bullock character, is undeniably doing a good thing taking Michael Oher, an allegedly slow kid from the streets of Memphis in.  Whether it’s white guilt, some embedded racism, or the need to do good by her school – she is putting a roof over Michael’s head and clearly cares for him (at least as much as she cares for herself).  How do you not root for her – even in scenes which are fairly thinly veiled Oscar scenes for Bullock?

Another useful trait for the movie are the Tuhoys themselves.  SJ, the youngest, is played by Jae Head, who stays just on this side of being too precious.  His job is to be cute, and he does it decently enough.  The rest of the family is also kind and good folks – so good that one is skeptical whether the real family was as unconflicted as these folks were about taking in a big black guy from the street. – so they are also easily sympathetic.  The movie has no real villains – it tries haphazardly to align the teachers “against” him, but of course the teachers want him to succeed.  We want this mission to succeed – and for Michael to do well.

Now, The Blind Side is not any sort of Oscar contender – even though it was.  It is cliched nonsense, a wind up machine meant to get schmaltz out of its viewers.  However, it does a good job on those fronts.  I have not described the plot because it really is made out of parts from the used screenplay store.  If you couldn’t guess the story arc, you’ve probably never seen a movie.  However the performances and the general nature of Oher’s lifts the film into a definite “Pass” score.

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Easy A

Will Gluck’s Easy A is a movie that gets to the precipice of comedy greatness, peers over the edge and scurries away.  In some ways I wish the first two acts of this movie weren’t so good – because the movie’s total puss out at the very conclusion becomes all the more frustrating.  This of course leaves a proper review of the movie to be very difficult to write.  There is so much good here that it is impossible to not recommend, but the movie’s conclusion left me annoyed – a clear case of pandering to an easy Hollywood formula instead of a comic leap the actors and material up to that point deserved.

One of the fascinating coincidences surrounding this movie is how a supporting player in one of the teenage comedies that DID get to the finish line (the brilliant Superbad) is the star of this movie.  Of course this is Emma Stone**, and her performance is the sort of thing that could be considered a star maker.  She and Gluck make the heroine, Olive, not just a sympathetic female lead, but a young woman with an angle on her life.  In an early scene she describes hanging out with one of her friends’ families. “Their family was weird.  And I live in California.”

** Considering she was “the catch” in the previous movie, the conceit that her character is an invisible creature in high school strains credibility, but hey, if bicycles can fly, right?

Olive is a fairly ordinary high schooler in California, where she has not found love or sex (how quaint – a high schooler in a teen movie who has not hit it).  The school contains the usual pressures of having sex, and the pressures to REALLY not have sex (as modeled by the consistently hilarious Crazy Christian group in school), and the movie pays good attention this.  Olive’s best friend has tales and badgers Olive about how her weekend was.  Finally, to stop things Olive lies – and says she has hooked up with a college bloke.

Of course, this being high school – the word travels, and the movie is very knowing in how the rumor mill gets started.  Suddenly, Olive has an air of mystery surrounding her as the “chick who did a college guy” and suddenly becomes the alleged lay of choice.  When she takes her downtrodden gay friend into a room at a party and pretends to have sex, suddenly she is a hot commodity.  Like just about all teenagers with this power, she sees a business opportunity as a faux tart of sorts – lending her name as a sexual conquest to various loser teenagers.

This enterprise seems to have a downside – who wants to become known as the town slut, even if it is known to be false.  I mean, it’s one thing to run this front – but the allegations can cut at a person just trying to have a normal life.  To Gluck’s credit, he does not shortchange this in the satire.  The rumor mill’s downside is given full respect.  This starts with both Olive becoming at first a friend of, and then mortal enemy of the Crazy Christians (with an inspired creepy leader performance by Amanda Bynes), Olive becoming entangled with faculty drama, and finally a loser guy who thinks she really is an easy tart.

Oh gosh there is a ton of good here in addition to what has already mentioned.  The faculty (most notably Thomas Haden Church and Lisa Kudrow) are well played – the book Olive is studying in Church’s class leads to the movie title – I particularly liked the special attention paid to students skipping reading a book by watching the movie. (hint: some books have been adapted more than once, and not all the same)  Olive’s parents are dotty in a very funny way without being the normal buffoons you find in teen comedies.  Frankly, the entire supporting cast is loaded with good performances by an all-star team of American character actors (in addition to the above, Patricia Clarkson, Stanley Tucci, Malcolm McDowell).

But I can’t ignore the third act.  Since this is a Hollywood movie, there is a love interest – a “right guy” for Olive.  This is fine I suppose, but my heart sunk as the movie continued.  It’s not that the chemistry is bad or whatever – but the movie’s satire and material is SO strong, that it feels luck Gluck tossed away a chance at a bitter comedy classic to chase down the “girl gets the boy” angle.  That said, maybe that sort of movie would never have gotten greenlit.  Easy A is so much better than most movies in its genre by such a wide margin in so many ways, that it gives us a hint at how it could have been really special, even if it doesn’t get there.  If this review seems maddening, then … well, you probably have been left with the appropriate sentiment.