Kinda Recommended. Another brilliant feminist tale written and directed by my favorite female director, Nora Ephron. LOVED Will Ferrell. Amazing gut wrenching laughs. He is brilliant as the self absorbed movie star on a down turn in his career. Some great lines about Hollywood insanity and selfishness, especially about acting. “He’s an actor. Deep down there is no deep down.” And “I want to be normal.” “Acting is better than normal. You get to pretend your normal.” But hey, some of my best friends are actors, so… Anyway, this is a brilliant modern day story about remaking the Bewitched series from television in the present day. And Nicole Kidman plays a real witch trying to be normal, who gets discovered to play the part of Samantha on the series. Loved the postmodern self-referential awareness of the whole thing. Samantha blurts out the moral of the story when she is talking about the TV show and says, “This show is about marriage.” The story is about Will Farell turning from a selfish self-centered man who thinks the world revolves around him and a woman is a support to his fame, into a man who sacrifices himself for the betterment of the woman and an egalitarian marriage. Another aspect of the theme was in the concept of striving to “exist between two worlds,” as Nicole says. This is about her being “born” a witch and trying to fit into a normal world, which reflects the films bigger canvas of women trying to fit into a world of the past (represented by the Bewitched conservative reality of the 60s) and the present, of feminism. Nicole’s witch is made to be naïve to the real world of relationships, though God only knows why. But this naivete then is the vehicle for exploring the struggle of women today. The conclusion of the film is “You can exist between two worlds.” Which is to say women can be somewhere in between the two extremes of barefoot and pregnant and trying to be like men. By the way, this is why the witchcraft side of it did not bother me. I saw it merely as a creative metaphor for exploring the place of women in society, not as an endorsement of witchcraft as a viable worldview. Although the very concept of Witchcraft being an inborn trait and neutral is of course, a lie. Diversity is a strong mythology of postmodern America, which is why you see a lot of movies like this being about being different and not fitting into a normal world, as if we have to eliminate the notion of “normal” It reflects the zeitgeist of our era of the idolatrous elevation of diversity over unity, and while I believe in diversity and acceptance of people who are different, not ALL diversity is legitimate. There must be boundaries or limitations of “normality” or you wind up with Chaos. The legitimate question that is raised by pomos is “Who defines normality?” Well, I think it’s pretty obvious that the Creator of the universe defines what is normal in HIS universe, not us. Anyway, one weakness of the story is the pitch for women to have a job to get self-esteem. Nicole says this several times in her own life and in the TV show, so it is an important point to the storyteller, but I found this unsatisfying and inconclusive. A fuller picture would be the discovery that jobs and careers are not what personal meaning or that psychobabble term “self-esteem” is all about. The fact is, achieving a career is ultimately empty without being rooted in something eternal, like people and God. While I am happy with my own career pursuits and achievements in life, none of it has any real lasting value except in light of my relationship with God and my wife, so those kind of stories never ring true to me. In my mind, it is a character flaw to consider self-esteem as our goal, or even career as fulfillment. That is something we need to be redeemed from, not something that redeems us. Anyway, I found it an interesting postmodern story about stories as the ending shows Will and Nicole falling in love, marrying and moving into a house that is the exact house of the show and we even see Abner and his wife across the street nosing in about it all. And so the reality and the myth blend into one, illustrating the point that storytelling is enough of a valid means of truth, it doesn’t have to be real. Reality, in the postmodern mind really is meaningless outside of story, and story is about story, not reality. So we use story to define our reality.
Comedy
Sahara
Kinda recommended for popcorn fun only. I was a Dirk Pitt fan when I was a kid. And this is a an okay standard action fare type stunt film. But I don’t really have anything to say about it because it is not inspirational in any way. It’s just a bunch of action and stunts and treasure hunting. Why do I go to these films? I gotta say that these action movies are getting more and more boring to me. Action, action, action, stunts, stunts, stunts, special effects, special effects, special effects. This is all very empty to me. I am more intrigued by drama, humanity, emotion, relationships, people, human beings and the meaning of life. Okay, so that’s my bias. But life is short, and I want entertainment that challenges me as a human being to be better, to examine my life. All right, yes, the simplest version of inspiration to fight evil is the action movie. And that in and of itself is good. I won’t deny that. But I just want more. I want a deeper meaning or at least a rudimentary exploration of the complexities of human nature. Life is too short to waste it on empty action.
Robots
Not really recommended. This CGI animated story about a small town robot that wants to go to the big city and be a famous inventor was a good little cartoon with some good morals. The moral themes were pretty obvious here from the mouths of the characters: “Follow your dream, and never give up,” “a dream that you don’t fight for can haunt you the rest of your life,” and “You can shine, no matter what you’re made of” (The old tagline for the company of inventions that the hero wants to be a part of). These are simple but good inspirational morals about the value of each and every person, even the oddballs, as represented in this story by oddball robots that are made of spare parts. But it also contains a theme of comparing the modern greedy corporate exploitation of the consumer with the old school understanding of “see a need, fill a need.” As one of the robots says, “It used to be about making life better. Now, it’s about money.” The new head of the biggest company decides to abolish making spare parts for robots to fix themselves and to advertise “Why just be yourself, when you can be NEW!” or something like that. In other words, they are going to only make upgrades, and robots who can’t afford it become outmoded and are sent to the chop shop, where the villain’s evil mother destroys and burns up all such old robot pieces. She is the Hilary Clinton of the corporation. Now, this obviously has a Marxist bent to it with it’s reduction of people to poor robots being economically exploited by the rich, but it’s not all bad or entirely false. What made it so unmoving to me personally was the inherent inhumanity in robots. Even though they were anthropomorphized and even though the themes were very human, at the end of the day, these are ultimately contraptions of mechanical soullessness. I could not ultimately care for them because they are not soulish animals. No matter how much you “humanize” them, they simply aren’t alive. It’s one thing to anthropomorphize animals like Finding Nemo and Ice Age. But these are animals that have souls, living organisms that have that link with humans in their “breath of life.” But I’m sorry, robots just don’t draw my affection. They may work as comic relief, as in Star Wars, but not as a materialistic world of machines. This is another argument against Darwinism and the claim that consciousness is merely a higher order of complexity or organization of matter without transcendence. But why did Toy Story work then? I think because even though they were toys, they were toys of people (Buzz and Woody) as well as animals (Godzilla, etc.) So the few purely mechanical toys that were not of living things were clearly overshadowed by the toys of “living things.” I am not against anthropomorphism, I’m just saying that anthropomorphizing robots is not satisfying to me because the gap between lifeless robots and humans is too great to draw human affection, whereas the gap between humans and animals is not.
Be Cool
Not Recommended. Chili Palmer leaves the movie business to try his hand in the music business. A couple of great jokes in this sequel to Get Shorty. Especially a great intelligent response by a Hip Hop producer to a Russian who calls him the N-word. The producer describes a litany of creative and economic influence of the black culture on the history of America – and then shoots him. On the one hand, very clever, on the other, the very problem with this story and its merchants of cool. I’m sorry, but ghetto gangsta culture is NOT COOL. It is EVIL. Its promotion of hatred, racism and violence against women and authority and violence in general, is just not worthy of be considered “cool.” And for that matter, neither is gangster and Hollywood culture. I like movies that mock those cultures, but not CELEBRATE them. And that’s why I could not enjoy this film. It seemed to have more fun with betrayal, murder, gangsters and gangstas than it did about any sense of doing the right thing. Yes, Chili Palmer is cool in that he talks his way out of most confrontations rather than using force . But HE REMAINS A CRIMINAL without repentance, and therefore is not a worthy hero to elevate or celebrate.
Meet the Fockers
Not really recommended. The sequel to the hilarious Meet the Parents. This one is the flip side in it’s theme. Whereas Meet the Parents was about meeting the uptight overbearing conservative parents, this one is about those people meeting their opposites, the Fockers, who are bleeding heart liberal loosey goosey 60s rejects. So the comedy of errors comes as a clever culture clash between conservative and liberal. Of course, the movie predictably favors the liberal parents, played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand. The endless sex jokes get tiring. Streisand is a sex therapist for seniors, so that’s what keeps every scene she is in about sex. And also predictably, the DeNiro character, is an uptight conservative whose redemption is found in his need to have more sex with this wife. This is really revelatory in that this is truly what liberal ideologues believe, that conservatives are hung up on sex and their whole problem in life is that they need to loosen up and just have some fun sex. Not only is this amazingly shallow, it’s simply untrue. Statistics have come out recently illustrating that religious conservative people generally have more fulfilled sex lives, and that religious women in particular have more and better orgasms. Well, that aside, there’s not much to say about this movie, cause it was a bit tiring. The funniest line of the first movie, “I’m watching you” with DeNiro gesturing to his eyes, was overexploited in this movie with DeNiro teaching a baby how to do “I’m watching you.”
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
Not Recommended. I put this into the category of boring expensive kid’s films like Harry Potter. I actually had to go to the bathroom in the middle of it and waited for an action sequence cause I knew I wouldn’t miss anything. This movie tries to bring some depth to the kids genre by being a story that isn’t about happy endings with elves and sweet candy. It’s the story of three siblings whose rich parents die and whose uncle, Count Olaf, wants to get rid of them so he can inherit the money. Jim Carey is great in the role of the sleazy actor, Count Olaf, trying to off the little siblings. And it’s not a dreadfully boring movie like Harry Potter. But it does seem a bit dark for younger kids, what with all the death and scariness going on in it. The narrator gloats over how his story is not happy at all and if you want happy stories, you had better go elsewhere. Then again, look at many of the original fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood and others. Those were very brutal stories and yet they are classics. On one level, I think the essence of growing up and “coming of age” is precisely facing one’s mortality and fairy tales help children to do this. Fantasy can be extreme cause its not real life, and it is symbolic. So it could be argued that this story is in that tradition. Okay. Fine. But the moral of the story is read at the end through a letter to the kids from their parents that was sent to them before they had died. And it just reads like a tacked on moral that doesn’t carry much weight to it. It was not emotionally moving or incarnate like The Incredibles. The parents just tell the kids, after we have seen them go through all these life threatening attacks from evil people, that “there’s much more good in the world than bad, you just have to look hard. And what may seem as unfortunate incidents can be a doorway to a new journey. With family around, there’s always something to do, whether inventing something (like the older sister Violet) or reading (like the middle brother Klaus) or biting (like the young Sunny).” Well, it just doesn’t have much punch to it. Like this is the solace for all the pain and suffering in life? Like this is how we grow up by just sticking our head in the sand regarding evil and keep moving? Very weak and humanistic. Without any moral fiber or character. Unsatisfying. It should be “Fight evil!” “Do right!” Like The Incredibles.
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Not Really Recommended. On one level, I really enjoy Wes Anderson films because he comes up with some very quirky characters and great dry humor. Bottle Rocket could very well be my favorite comedy of all time. Rushmore was brilliant. But this one was not quite there for me. It had some amusing moments and clever characters, but the story just didn’t hold me. Or rather, the lack of a story shall we say. This movie lacked transcendence. All it really had was quirky characters and dry humor. It is a satirical homage to Jacques Cousteau and his quirky little niche of ocean documentaries. But the only thing that approached a story here was the idea that Zissou was searching for the shark that ate his best friend and partner of 30 years. Problem is, it fizzled in the process as it was overwhelmed by quirky subplot tangents, like being held up by ocean pirates and trying to rescue their bond company stooge after he is kidnapped by the Filipino criminals. Funny little scenes but they diffused the interest of the story. Also, the only good subplot that tried to be there was Owen Wilson playing a pilot who thinks he is Zissou’s son, so he joins the mission in order to find himself and a relationship with his father. Unfortunately, this subplot is never resolved and we are left hanging with an empty reality at the end. He isn’t Zissou’s son, but never finds out. So a whole lot of emotional and human drama is bypassed in the interest of some “I don’t want to be like Hollywood” snobbery on the writer-director’s part.
Ocean’s Twelve
Not Recommended. I dreaded having to watch this film. Paying for this movie is thievery. It’s really very simple, folks. Kindergarten lesson in morality: CRIME IS NOT COOL. If you support crime as cool, then you are morally responsible for adding to the culture of crime by encouraging kids to do so. And don’t tell me it doesn’t influence kids. Hollywood will go on moralistic crusades against displaying cigarettes in movies and they spew hatred at those who do because they say it MAKES SMOKING LOOK COOL. BUT IT’S ALL RIGHT FOR THEM TO depict crime as cool and all of a sudden, it doesn’t affect kids. What absolute hypocrites. Now they believe movies affect kids, now they don’t. Surprise! I normally try to say what I like about a film, even if I don’t agree with it, but this one is so morally bankrupt, the immorality overshadows the good. It would be like trying to say what is good about a porn film. There is a point at which the bad overcomes the good and devalues anything that might have been good. Same here. In this movie, the whole lump of dough has been leavened. The only reason why I didn’t leave half way through is because I knew I couldn’t say this with authority unless I knew how it ended. And I actually gave it the benefit of the doubt, thinking, maybe, just maybe it would have a moral twist at the end like Matchstick Men. But alas, it did not. Please don’t miss this. I am NOT saying making a movie about crime is wrong, or depicting crime is wrong. I am saying depicting crime as COOL and making it pay IS WRONG. I have no respect for these actors who protest with their self-righteous Church Lady tongue wagging that the war in Iraq is criminal, and then make a movie saying crime is cool. This is moral pollution. Do they really think God is not watching? And oh yeah, it’s just one big celebrity worship orgy. Everyone acting their parts like celebrities playing cool criminals and having a ball at it. Oh, yeah, fun! Hey, aren’t they such cool criminals! At least that’s what kids are going to think. I sure as heck didn’t. I was repulsed. The antidote to this movie is The Ladykillers, where crime starts out as cool, but then it is revealed to be what it truly is: Fool. Now that is cool.
The Incredibles
Highly Recommended. I won’t say it. I won’t say it was “incredible.” No. It was FANTASTIC. Pixar is the greatest animation studio since Disney started. In fact, they have become what Disney has failed to maintain, the animated family film studio. I absolutely loved the pro-family nature of this film. A family that bickers and is not being themselves, who have to draw together and use their special abilities to not only save the world, but save each other as well. Some tight-lipped prissies will say that the family was discordant and always bickering which did not support harmony in family. And these people do not know what they are talking about. Just cause a family bickers does not mean they are not harmonious on a deeper level. Anyone who claims that they do have a happy family that doesn’t bicker at all is not fooling anyone but themself. I have to admit this, that the scenes of the family drawing together to save each other, along with their friend, the freezer superhero, actually made me tear up because every act of drawing together and helping each other was an ACT of harmony and familial love that supported the ultimate bond that a family should have. I loved the kids. I loved how each of their super powers reflected their own character type or personality. The girl who can turn invisible and create force fields around herself is a shy girl who hides and protects herself from hurt. The speedy boy is an ADD kid. The stretch mom is a mom who stretches herself for everyone in her family, and the super dad is a testosterone fiend looking for excitement. I loved it. The theme of “the hero in all of us” or the “special value of each person” was very beautiful. And even the sociocultural picture of our society was profound. In the story, people start sueing super heros for saving them when they didn’t want to be saved or the collateral damage that occurs in the midst of the saving. Sound familiar? This gets to the point that all superheros can no longer afford the legal cost of saving people so they stop it and become “normal.” Well, how real is this? THIS IS AMERICA. We have a society where criminals sue their victims and win, where single selfish individuals win outrageous lawsuits that hurt medical or scientific industries. Law suits have become a new form of legitimized crime. We are a litigious society that blames everyone else for our own sins and wants everyone else to pay for it. We have a society of mediocrity where employees who seek excellence are castigated by the rest of the employees because excellence makes their mediocrity look bad. I know, I’ve seen this myself. Consequently good people who would help society are hindered in doing so because of the selfish mediocrity and jealousy of others. This entitlement mentality and blameshifting culture is destroying goodness and righteousness in our country. The Incredibles makes all good fun of this fault, but it leaves you with a profound revelation as well. This entitlement and blameshifting is squelching the “super heros” around us. The Incredibles brings back goodness and excellence and roots it in the family like no movie I’ve seen I a long time.
Shark Tale
Recommended, but beware of subversion. I love CGI animation. I love how expressive and cute the animated characters can be, how they represent human emotions and gestures with such similitude. I enjoy the simple storylines, easy to follow, strong on moral content. Shark Tale is one of these. Unfortunately, it’s a mixed bag of good values and subversive ones. Oscar is the little slacker fish at a Whale Wash who has big dreams of being loved by being somebody important up on the “top of the reef.” When he falsely gets the credit for slaying a shark, he goes with it in order to achieve that fame he wants so badly. Meanwhile, Lenny, the shark, is dying to get out of his shark family because he is a vegetarian and doesn’t want to rule the waters through fear and a carnivorous appetite. The shark world is portrayed rather ingeniously as a fish eat fish mafia family. Only the strong… Very clever and provides a whole new context for the genre. Loved that. Oscar and Lenny team up to help each other and everyone learns their lesson by the end. What I really liked about this film is the theme about the emptiness at the “top” of celebrity worship. Oscar’s character flaw is that he thinks he needs to be “somebody” famous and important to be loved, that he has to “be somebody,” because “nobody loves a nobody,” But what he doesn’t bargain for is that the “people” of that world of celebrity, as embodied in Lola, the sexy fickle female fish who uses him for her own benefit, are vacuous and without real substance or permanence in their character. Oscar comes to realize that the real ones who love him all along have been right in front of him, as embodied in the lovable small town fish girl Angie, who sticks with him through thick and thin. As she finally screams to him, “I loved you when you were a nobody! I loved you before the Lie!” Interesting that “the Lie” here is the alleged killing of the shark, but it really expresses a wider theme that the entire celebrity culture is itself a Lie. I was clearly reminded of It’s a Wonderful Life with George Bailey wanting to “wipe the dust off my feet of this crummy little town and see the world.” Build skyscrapers and such. It’s all great Americana values here and I love that. The simple morality of middle American values are captured in Angie’s straightforward command when she discovers the lie: To Oscar, “you tell the truth,” and to Lenny, “and you go home.” Of course, they don’t at the beginning and that’s what gets them into trouble. Oscar finally realizes, “I didn’t need to go to the top of the reef. Everything I needed was right in front of me the whole time.” The love of a good woman, and friends. Now, I guess a Marxist could criticize this as a conspiracy of slave class reinforcement, considering that the movie also repackages the whole “Car Wash” context for the poor black culture as happy slavery. You know, don’t aspire to greatness, just accept your position in life at the bottom of the food chain, and enjoy it doing what you are best at, slave jobs at slave wages. But I think that is too simplistic. I think the point of this is more like The Wizard of Oz, and Wonderful Life, to see the value of home and those who truly do love you, and the shallowness, indeed falsity, of public love for celebrity. And that is an interesting irony undergirding this moral story. Here you have all these celebrity actors and actresses, like Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, Robert DeNiro, Jack Black and others who are starring in a story about how empty and worthless their own celebrity existence is. They are the fish on the “top of the reef” telling us it is a miserable lonely life up there. Do they even realize their own stories condemn them? Now, here is what I did not like about the movie: Lenny the shark is clearly an analogy for a homosexual and so his mafia family’s rejection of him is an analogy for the claim that traditional society is being intolerant of homosexuals. Lenny is fey and sensitive like a homosexual cliché out of Will and Grace, and likes to dress up “like a dolphin,” which is an obvious insult to sharks, like “dressing up like a woman” is to men. And the way he dresses is obviously a queer eye guy with his yellow scarf around his neck. He regurgitates familiar gay phrases, like, “I’m not like other sharks,” “My family doesn’t accept me,” and “I like to dress like a dolphin, so what?” At the end this “dressing up” thing becomes more pronounced when the head shark, Lenny’s father, finally does accept him “no matter what you eat or how you dress.” And then they show other sharks being “liberated” from their mean stodgey “sharkness” by dressing up in what can only be considered Mardi Gras Gay Pride costumes. This theme of “accepting” people with abnormal behaviors or abnormal “tastes” is a very common one in movies, and an obvious subversive one driven by those with an anti-Christian agenda. And I might also add, a rather hypocritical one as well. I think it’s time Hollywood should start practicing what it preaches and put aside its own prejudice and bigotry. I think Hollywood should start expressing tolerance toward Christians and traditional moral valued people, who are truly the hated outcast rejected oppressed victims in LaLa Land.