Up In the Air

George Clooney is not his usual charming, humourous self in the 2009 film Up in the Air. He plays a corporate road warrior, whose job is to lay people off and whose goal is to get to ten million frequent flyer miles without having any meaningful human contact. Things get weird when his company decides to start doing its work by teleconference, he meets a woman in a hotel bar who he begins to care about and his life starts to change. But at the end, nothing has changed, and he's sadder for it. It's a thoughtful story, even if it doesn't end well. Walter Kirn’s novel, interestingly, tells an rather different, and perhaps deeper, story, in which our point of view character's flaws are more visible, though it doesn't make him more likeable.

RED / RED 2

RED (2010) is yet another comic book of a movie. Bruce Willis is a retired CIA troubleshooter and assassin who Knows Too Much and now They Are Out To Get Him. He gathers his old buddies --- John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman --- plus a former Russian adversary, plus the girl at the other end of the phone, Mary-Louise Parker. They go off and start causing trouble, including shooting up a campaign rally. Lots of laughs. Things blow up. Great fun all around.

        It was followed up by RED 2 in 2013, which was a satisfying sequel to a very entertaining movie. Willis’s relationship with Mary Louise Parker's character continues to morph --- he's happy to be retired from being a spy, she wants to continue the adventure they had when they met --- and they get thrown into rescuing Moscow from the threat of nuclear annihilation with the help of Helen Mirren, crazy John Malkovich, Catherine Zeta-Jones as a Russian General, and Anthony Hopkins as a seemingly-senile British scientist. All sorts of action, all sorts of amusement, lots of Zeta-Jones's legs and hair. We also get actual character development as Parker's character comes into her own.

        Must remember to dig up Walter Ellis and Cully Hamner’s graphic novel which was the jumping off point for these.

Veronica Mars

Earlier this week, I reviewed the Veronica Mars television show, noting that it petered out rather than resolving plot points.  The Veronica Mars movie from earlier this year has some of the same problem. We rejoin our characters at the time of their tenth high school reunion. Veronica, having graduated from law school is getting ready to embark on a career as a New York lawyer, far away from Neptune, California and its problems and dramas. But Veronica is dragged back into being a private detective because former bad-boy boyfriend Logan Echolls has been arrested for murder. This is a new plot, a new mystery to solve, and a satisfying soluton to the murder. At the end of the movie, Veronica decides to move back to Neptune, not to take up law there (rather than in New York), but to return to being a PI.  Even worse, the sense we're left with at the end is that we're not having a standalone story, but rather a way to set up for a movie franchise or another TV series.  

Man of Steel (revisited)

For the record, we went back and watched the part of Man of Steel after Kal-El gets off Krypton.  I’d heartily objected to the first part of the movie earlier. While Kevin Costner as Clark Kent's Earth dad is a little over the top, and Zack Snyder's direction means the fight scenes go on forfreakin'ever, on the whole, the thing didn't suck. Alexandra Katherine, my local speaker-to-comics-fans, tells me that this is all in service of starting a Justice League movie franchise, since the Marvel Avengers movie was so successful.  [Spoiler warning] I note that we will start that franchise with an interesting retcon: Lois already knows Clark’s secret identity. 

Particle Fever

Particle Fever is a lovely little documentary about the work of bringing CERN's Large Hadron Collider on-line. The point-of-view bounces back and forth between the theoreticians at Hopkins and Princeton and Stanford, and the experimentalists up to their hips in hardware at CERN outside of Geneva. We get to see the ups-and-downs of bringing the LHC beam on-line and the failure of super-conducting magnets that cause a delay in bringing the LHC to full power. At the climax, we get to see the seminar in which the two interlocking experiments searching for the Higgs boson present their results, both seeing the same energy peak. During that seminar, as the second team announces the confirming results, the filmmakers turn their camera to the audience breaking into applause and a shot of Peter Higgs, dabbing at the corners of his eyes with his handkerchief.

        One of the things that's only touched on here is one of the eternal struggles in scientific research, the struggle for funding. The question from those in Congress who ask, "what good is it? will it help us make better weapons? why should I spend money on this rather than on tax cuts, social programs, the war on drugs?" The answer is never easy, but it's pretty simple:

        The reason for doing basic scientific research is to understand our world. Learning things is what makes us human. Finding the Higgs boson is what we want to know next. To the reluctant Congressmen, I'd add, this is what makes America great: asking a big question, striving to find out something new, to bring new knowledge to light. It's things like this that bring students to our shores. The answers are ones that won't bear economic fruit tomorrow, or the next day, and perhaps not even directly, but they will make us richer both in spirit and in means.

Gambit

For Thanksgiving weekend amusement, I suggest Gambit, a lovely 2012 caper movie, with Colin Firth playing the art curator for a rapacious, annoying, ill-mannered Rupert Murdoch billionaire played by Alan Rickman, and Cameron Diaz as the Texas rodeo queen who is supposed to in possession of a long-missing Monet from his Haystacks series. Diaz's Monet is a forgery, perpetrated by Firth's accomplice, and Rickman already owns one of the series, for which he outbid his Japanese business rival at auction. Much hilarity ensues as Rickman tries to put the moves on Diaz, and Firth ends up on the ledge of the Savoy Hotel without his trousers. Eventually, the painting is delivered and Rickman brings in a second expert, who authenticates the fake. Then things get complicated. It's not deep and it's not a great plot, but it's amusing nonetheless, with good performances all around.

Despicable Me 2

A little while back, I favorably reviewed Despicable Me, and have now had a chance to see the inevitable 2013 sequel, Despicable Me 2, which is just as much fun. Former arch-villian Gru, now a devoted father, is recruited to join the Anti-Villain League. He and his partner, Lucy, succeed in finding the bad guy despite his secret identity. Unfortunately, a number of Gru's minions are kidnapped in the process, and they must be saved, too. And, because this is a fairy tale, Lucy and Gru fall in love. As much fun as the original, with Steve Carell continuing to display his breadth as the voice of Gru, Kristen Wiig hilariously playing Lucy, and Benjamin Bratt as the bad guy, El Macho.

(And I note from IMDb, it looks like the Minions are set to have their own movie.)

The Thirteenth Floor

The Thirteenth Floor was one of the computer-mediated-reality movies in 1999, the year which brought us The Matrix and Being John Malkovich, all of which foreshadowed Inception. Based on a Daniel F Galouye book, a software company builds an artificial-reality based in 1930s Los Angeles, and their chief scientist discovers that, in fact, they're in an artificial reality themselves. "Wait! You mean it's turtles all the way down?" Well, maybe. The casting and acting are excellent, since we have each actor playing a different version of themselves in each of the levels of reality. We have a very young Vincent D'Onofrio and the lovely Gretchen Mol and versatile Craig Bierko and Armin Mueller-Stahl putting characters on and off like cardigans. Not as well-known as its contemporaries, but a more subtle story.

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For this week's light Friday fare, we put together Warren Beatty and a very young Goldie Hawn in a 1971 caper movie named $. Beatty plays a bank security consultant who figures out how to empty the safe-deposit boxes of folks who are hiding ill-gotten gain. He's in cahoots with Hawn, playing the spacey hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold. Amusement ensues. Not great cinema, but worth an evening sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn.

Enchanted

I finally had a chance to see Enchanted, Disney's 2007 movie about a cartoon princess who through the usual evil stepmother intervention ends up in our flesh-and-blood reality, dropped into New York City. Amusement and true love ensue, including a production number in Central Park which shares some moves with a Disneyland character parade, complete with calypso drummers and somersaulting ConEd repairmen.  Amy Adams (in an early role) plays the princess. Susan Sarandon as the real-life evil stepmother is pretty funny. And the bit in which our princess summons the woodland creatures to help clean the apartment by singing out the window is a wonderful riff on a classic fairytale cartoon meme: this is New York, so rats, pigeons, and cockroaches appear to help.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

How to describe The Grand Budapest Hotel? It is not a murder mystery, though there is a murder. It is not a drama, though there are moments of suspense. It is not a comedy, though much of it is grandly absurd. It is not a caper movie, though there is a theft, a hidden message, and a complicated getaway. It is not a period piece, though it takes place in a grand hotel between the world wars. It is not a comedy of manners, though there is quite a bit of interplay between the very rich and the staff. However, we can say that the story is intricate and amusing as we follow M Gustave, concierge of the eponymous hotel, on his outragous adventures with his lobby boy-in-training. The acting is exquisite, with a huge, varied, talented cast, excellent performances by Ralph Fiennes and F Murray Abraham, and stunning supporting work by Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, and Jeff Goldblum. It made for a lovely evening.

The Enemy Within

The Enemy Within is a 1994 HBO remake of Seven Days in May, giving a slightly different spin on the Knebel/Bailey novel. We have Forest Whitaker as the Marine colonel who uncovers the plot to overthrow the President, Sam Waterston as the President (attempting to affect a southern accent), and Jason Robards as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and leader of the coup attempt. This version substitutes shots of marching troops and rolling tanks through working-class neighborhoods and a conflict between the colonel and his son for plot development. While this wasn't a complete disaster, it suffers badly in comparion to the 1964 John Frankenheimer-directed, Rod Serling-scripted rendition. Watch that version instead.

The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie might seem on the surface like a piece of kid fluff. But it's actually a brilliant movie that works on multiple levels, like Rocky and Bullwinkle used to, with lots of puns: In Lego World, our hero, Emmett, has to search for the legendary Piece of Resistance, for example. Emmett and his band, led by wizard Vituvius (voiced by Morgan Freeman) are battling Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell). Lord Business wants to lock down everything in the world with the mysterious Kragle, so that the residents of the various Lego environments can't keep rearranging the carefully constructed buildings and spaceships. After all, it's vitally important to follow the printed directions and not have all this anarchy. But Emmett, Vitusius, Wyldstyle, and the other Master Builders want to go their own way and construct spaceships out of roadways, racecars out of saloons, and pirate ships out of buildings. In the end, Emmett and a small person convince The Man Upstairs that some amount of chaos in the world is not a bad thing.

Tampopo

Contrast The Ramen Girl with Jûzô Itami's 1985 masterpiece Tampopo, which is a brilliant, layered comedy. A truck driver happens upon a noodle shop operated by a widow. The widow is not a very good noodle chef but the truck driver agrees to help her improve. Her story is interleaved with other lovely comedic scenes involving food: a gangster gourmet and his beautiful girlfriend make sexual adventure in a hotel out of room service, a matron teaches debutantes to eat western style; executives can't read the French menu they're handed and are shown up by the office boy. Meanwhile, our cowboy truck driver and the noodle-cooking widow go on a quest to learn what how to make her better. They spy on other shops in the neighborhood, sneaking looks at their garbage. They are aided by a very wealthy patron whose life they have saved, not with the Heimlich maneuver, but with a vacuum cleaner. When they find the Ramen Master he's not in a limousine, but in a hobo camp among other epicureans, who wax poetic about the state of the dumpsters of various famous restaurants. In the end, of course, our heroine learns to make excellent ramen, her restaurant is successful, and the truck driver can ride off into the sunset.

The Ramen Girl

An American girl moves to Tokyo because her boyfriend is there, and then he breaks up with her, and then even though she knows no Japanese, she throws herself on the mercy of the man who owns the ramen shop across the street who speaks no English. The Ramen Girl, starring Brittany Murphy with dark circles under her eyes in every scene looking like she's hungover, is a low-rent, 'tweener version of Tampopo, with a few glimpses of Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Murphy begs to be taught how to make ramen, and doesn't want to expend the effort in the apprenticeship of cleaning the pots and washing the counters and mucking out the bathrooms. And yet, after a year of this back-and-forth with the noodle shop owner, she is making acceptable ramen, and the Ramen Master comes to visit and pass on her cooking ability. He arrives in a black limosine, and declares that she is good, but still needs work. So, after the neighborhood gives her a parade, she decamps to American to open a raman shop in the shadow of the Empire State Building.

Moon

We see too many movies with too many special effects.  But back in 2009 Sam Rockwell and the voice of Kevin Spacey teamed up together in a little character study in a science fiction setting called Moon. It's got a couple of fascinating twists and turns, and is just very cool. Well worth the two hours, and it was high on my personal Hugo shortlist that year and took home the award. Amazing bang for the buck, considering that the movie was made for about the cost of a Big Mac.

Oblivion

Last year's Tom Cruise movie Oblivion has finally made it to viewing at our house. It's very pretty, as are Cruise and co-star Andrea Riseborough. Earth's been invaded. The Moon's been destroyed. Cruise and Riseborough are drone repairmen on Earth, protecting the water desalinization plants while everyone else resettles on Titan. And then a capsule containing hybernation pods reenters the atmosphere, leading us to the discovery of what's been hidden from our heroes. There were no plot twists, only telegrams. There were no revelations, only teases. There were no new ideas, only stolen rehashes. There isn't a single frame in these two hours that isn't completely predictable to anyone who has the slightest familiarity with the Big Book of Summer Blockbuster Sci-Fi Plots.

Taking Chance

By interesting contrast to The Hurt Locker and made in the same timeframe, we have Taking Chance (2009), a little movie starring Kevin Bacon for which he got a best actor award from the Screen Actors. Bacon is on screen for the whole thing playing a Marine colonel who volunteers to escort the body of Chance Phelps, a lance corporal killed in Iraq, home to Wyoming. He takes on the job in the mistaken belief that the kid was from his hometown in Colorado, except that's just where he enlisted. Bacon starts the trip not quite sure what to expect, but is met by respect and caring at every turn, from the airline clerk who upgrades his flight to first class, to the baggage agent who brings him a sleeping bag when he insists on keeping watch overnight, to the pilot who asks a planeful of people to wait so that the colonel and lance corporal can get off first, to the men of the VFW in the small town in Wyoming. Quite a nice, and very moving, little movie, speaking about the direct cost of war and respect for those who pay it.

The Hurt Locker

There was some amusement in these quarters that both James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow were nominated for best director Oscars, and that each of their respective 2009 movies received nine nominations. The amusement, of course, stems from the fact that Ms Bigelow was the third (of five!) Mrs James Cameron. However, now that I've seen her movie, I can unreservedly report that while Avatar is very pretty and a technical tour de force, The Hurt Locker is a much better film. It's the story of a guy who has been defusing bombs in a war zone for so long that he doesn't know anything else. The pain and confusion of the war zone is constant, and we watch the ways in which this team of bomb guys blow off steam and wander through the fog of war.  Deservedly, it won both best director and best picture.

Avatar

White European industrialists bad. Smurfs, er, native people good. That's the plot of Avatar (2009). A rehash of Disney's Pocahantas, (or, if you prefer, Dances with Wolves) with a swipe from Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe". That said, it's visually stunning and beautifully executed, but, boy, the evil Earthmen meme wears a little thin by the time we get to the third hour and the interminible battle scene.