Not Recommended. Boring. Stupid. The heros are so soulless and uninteresting, you actually start to have sympathies for the muggles, who really can be more interesting. Who’s the muggle now? Oh, one cool thing, the Hippogriff FX, that was cool.
Sci-Fi Fantasy
Shrek 2
Recommended for adults. Funny. Very funny. A good sequel, which is hard to do. It revisits the original movie’s theme that beauty and love is in the eye of the beholder, and trying to be someone you are not or measure up to society’s definitions of beauty and fashion is harmful. The problem I had with it is that it attempted to add to this theme the idea that cross-dressers and transvestites, and other perversities are part of the “goodness” of being yourself. Pinnochio wears women’s underwear and Cinderella’s wicked stepsister is actually a male cross-dresser or transvestite who owns a bar. The whole point is that, though given the magical opportunity to change herself and Shrek into beautiful “Royal Family” looking people rather than ogres, Princess Fiona chooses not to because that’s not who she married. It would be untrue to Shrek and herself. Well, the logical extension is to show other characters in the story who are victims of such social standards of “imposed” identities and fashion. These characters, then, by extension, are also reflections of the heroine’s own redemption (ala the Pinnochio and the wicked stepsister). It’s easy to see how the filmmakers considered bizarre perversions to be part and parcel of that redemption. Without an absolute moral standard to define good and bad social norms, ALL variety of human identity becomes legitimate. They just don’t realize the Frankenstein monster they’ve created.
The Day After Tomorrow
Recommended mostly for the Special Effects. Standard disaster movie fare. A pretty good subplot of a father and son loving relationship between the lead characters, Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal. Good self sacrifice ethics. The mother/wife of the lead characters stays at a hospital with a terminally ill boy at the risk of her life — great anti-euthanasia ethic. A friend cuts himself loose from a hanging rope to save the other guys from dying with him. Jake going back to rescue the girl at risk to his life a couple times. You know, that’s what really makes a good disaster movie are precisely the self sacrificial acts of heroism. And that makes a movie like this good on a mythological level for reinforcing the kind of values that civilization is built upon.
I gotta say though that the idea that this movie is somehow a “warning” to our exploitation of natural resources is really rather laughable. Although I believe in responsible stewardship of the earth’s recources, there is really no evidence that man can do the kind of damage that extreme environmentalists claim. In the beginning of the story it is explained that the same thing is happening now that happened 10,000 years ago, with global climate change. The ice caps are melting causing worldwide distruptions, etc. etc. And then at the end of the movie, the US President says on a speech that if we aren’t more careful with our resource consumption, we’ll destroy ourselves. Well, let’s see, which industrial smoke stacks, SUVs and aerosal sprays brought on the previous Ice Age 10,000 years ago? HUH?? They undercut their own message with a non-sequitir. In the movie itself, they illustrated that global climate change has nothing to do with Man. It’s part of the natural processes. Volcanos destroy more ozone in one eruption than 100 years of man’s industrial activity. Ex-radical environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg wrote a massive documented tome, The Skeptical Environmentalist, systematically dismantling the fear claims of pollution, chemicals, greenhouse effect etc. There just is no such extreme danger. There is a moment in the film when the President of the US says, “How come nobody told us about this, where are the scientific facts?” The scientist says, “We did, but you didn’t listen to our science.” People in the audience laughed. The fact is, if we had listened to all these other fanatical junk science claims over the years, we’d be bankrupted. If only we’d listened to the population bomb experts that told us the 30 years ago that the earth would be uninhabitable right now because of population explosion and the 1980s AIDS scaremongers who said one half the population would have AIDS right now. Junk science may make for good movies, but not for real science.
Van Helsing
Not recommended. I liked the idea of this movie, that Van Helsing, the infamous vampire hunter from the novel Dracula, was actually a monster hunter who tracked down vampires, werewolves and monsters of all sorts. But the execution was just a motley concoction of absurd action sequences and rambling expositional details. It seemed that there were so many special rules in this world that had to be explained, that it bogged the story down. Before every action sequence we are treated to quickly spoken dialogue by an indigent who explains all the special rules so we can make sense of the behavior that is about to follow. When Van Helsing tries to get the Frankenstein monster out of Transilvania because he is the key to Dracula’s diabolical plan, we are told that he used Transilvania horses on the carriage because they are the fastest on earth and can outrun werewolves. We hear this because we have seen how easily the Wolfman runs, jumps, and catches people. But then the vampires and Wolfman catch up with them halfway anyway! Whatever. One interesting twist was that the Frankenstein monster turned out to be very human, indeed humane. They show him having read a Bible and he quotes the 23rd Psalm when captured by the vampires for their elaborate plan. We see that he has a faith relationship to God, which makes us very sympathetic toward the monster. Unfortunately, this idea is never explored which wasted the potential transcendence of the story. It was all rather silly.
Hellboy
Recommended. Good ole fashioned clarity of good and evil in a morally confused era. Bad guys try to conquer the world by opening a portal to another dimension for some evil beings to come through. Unfortunately, the story or plot is not as clear as the morality. Hitler tried to open the portal by using the occult and Rasputin and now the bad guys are trying to do it again. But the first time, a little guy came through who looked like a demon but was raised by a good professor to fight evil at the Institute of the Paranormal (that doesn’t exist of course). Anyway, it never really explains why Hellboy looks like a demon but is not. Is this supposed to explain spiritual manifestations as really something more like aliens misinterpreted as demons? (Shades of Stargate). Or is this a confusing mixture of spiritual and alien culture? Just doesn’t make clear. This movie has a lot of rather shallow Christian symbolism because of the professor being an ex-priest, but at least positive symbols, which I applaud. It’s just too bad, it was not wrapped up into the theme as it should have been. Like why was the priest relevant to the situation if Hellboy was not a demon, but a being from another dimension that is not spiritual. Didn’t make sense to me. One of the clever sayings was, “In the absence of light, darkness prevails,” which I guess means something akin to “The only way for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” But more importantly, the theme is reiterated in the film by the protagonist, “What makes a man? His origins? I don’t think so. It’s the choices he makes and how he chooses to make them.” This is supposed to reflect Hellboy’s pathos of trying to fit into society, but being rejected because they misunderstand him as evil, when he is really good. They think of him as inhuman when he is humanlike. This is a common theme of diversity in movies these days (X-Men, Hidalgo, etc.) and I hope it does not get to be too tired. Unfortunately, this is pretty much just another formula action FX movie where, in addition to the FX and stunts, the key to it’s success is how many clever lines they can throw in to make the heros look cool and sarcastic before they woop the bad guys. That’s fine by me, especially since this one has some great lines. But it is ultimately unfocused in story.
The Butterfly Effect
Not Really Recommended. An interesting take on the Chaos theory notion that the smallest change in a sequence can result in major ramifications down the road. The example often quoted by Chaos theoreticians: A butterfly flapping its wings can result in a hurricane on the other side of the world. This movie is a strong embodiment of that idea with a corresponding caution about man’s inability to control his destiny. Ashton Kutcher plays Evan, a young man who discovers an ability to travel back in time through reading his journals written throughout his troubled early life. He starts to go back in time in order to right some wrongs and save people he loves, only to result in either worse lives for them or for others around them. A problem I had with it is that the storytellers gave him such a harsh and dysfunctional family and neighborhood that it was hard to believe. A local pedophile child-abuser with a son who becomes a killer and a daughter who is ruined psychologically is technically feasible, but it just all seemed too extreme to relate to, it caused a disconnect in my suspension of disbelief. I liked the multidimensional display of how child abuse destroys people in different ways, no matter what single thing you may try to change. As Evan goes back to change specific events in his friend’s lives, he realizes that there are so many other events that he could not anticipate, and we see those results with each new “universe” he embarks down. It’s a great idea but not a great movie. Secondly, the story was very casual about sexual promiscuity in the lead characters. It is interesting to note that the storytellers had no clue about the fact that the fornication they celebrate in the “good versions” of the characters’ lives, is just as linked, in reality, to dysfunctional values, experiences, and poor choices as every other dysfunction in the movie. In some ways, the most destructive dysfunctions of all are those which are not even considered problematic, the ones that are assumed as good by society, and then cause the turmoil in people’s hearts when they can’t understand why their lives are so broken or empty. As C.S. Lewis said, “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” One strong moral component that I thought was a missed opportunity was that in one of the “many worlds” that Evan “creates,” all his friends are happy and well-adjusted, but HE is a quadrapalegic. He decides to kill himself because he is afraid of going back and messing it all up again. But this is an act of self-pity, not heroism. Okay, that would be a first reaction, but why couldn’t he have come to the conclusion that he must suffer for the sake of other’s happiness, and bear up under life’s trials? That would have been profound. Instead the filmmakers chose to have Evan discover that his mother turns out to be the one who is suffering, which justifies going back one more time to try to save her as well. The Butterfly Effect is a great idea, but not a great movie.
Paycheck
Not Recommended. Pretty formulaic conspiracy story about seeing the future. Compared to Phillip Dick’s other stories that became Blade Runner and Minority Report, this is just terribly uninspiring. I never thought I would see Uma Thurman act so poorly. Ben Affleck is a reverse engineer who does illegal work for a corporate marauder played by Aaron Eckhart. After he does his work, his memories are erased with a special machine so he doesn’t know what he did. This latest job turns out to be a machine that can see into the future and of course, the bad guy wants to use it to get rich and control. There are some clever sayings throughout about the nature of fortune telling. Knowledge of the future controls people. If a futurist tells people that there will be war, then a country goes to war preemptively to get a jump on it (an obvious and inadequate reference to the recent preemptive strike on Iraq by the U.S.). If the futurist says there will be a stock market crash, everyone rushes to sell their stocks before it happens, thus creating the crash. Ben says, “If you show someone the future, they have no future. Take away the future, you take away their hope.” Knowledge of the future is a form of control over others. A Romantic materialist worldview is expressed by Uma when she says to Ben, “All we are is the sum of our experiences.” An interesting approach to this ability to see the future is used by the storytellers. They use the Eastern notion of palm reading. The big future-seeing machine is simply a technological palm reader. This is set up earlier by showing a palm reading diagram in Ben’s apartment as he plays with hand balls with the Tao symbols of yin and yang on them. This Eastern notion of fortune telling is a clever idea for explaining the basis of foreknowledge and is very chic now in movies, but it is pagan and fraudulent in truth.
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Highly Recommended (Did you have any doubt??) What can I say about this movie to do it justice? It clearly should win the Oscar for best picture. It is the conclusion of the series and has all the best battle sequences, as well as pinnacles of honor. The themes of friendship, honor, loyalty, courage are at their height. And the overarching theme that we must fight and even die to save a civilization from evil is certainly not a well-loved idea by many who hate the freedom of Western civilization created by a Judeo-Christian worldview. And yes, that is exactly what the foundation of this mythology is, and I know some people just hate to admit that, but it’s true through and through. Those who would try to paint this series as racist because supposedly villains are “of color” in the film are themselves racists and bigots. Their racist hatred is blind to the fact that one of the biggest villains is white, as well as a host of other wild men and evildoers who joined Sauramon. I guess these racists would not be satisfied unless all the villains are white and all the good guys are of color. These racists must also be bigoted against small people since Gimli and Hobbits are heros and they are calling the story racist. And they must be against the environment since trees and ents are good guys. I guess facts don’t matter when someone is trying to stir up hatred and prejudice. You can be as balanced as you can and agenda-driven people will still see their conspiracy theory. The funny thing is, the whole point of Tolkien’s mythology is precisely multicultural — in the good sense. That is, all the races of men, dwarves, elves, ents etc. should stand together and fight evil in every form, no matter what race it comes from. The metaphor for race and color in this story is obviously dwarf, elf, man, ent, etc. Duh!
Timeline
Recommended. This one is about some archeologists who go back in a time machine to the Middle Ages to rescue a fellow professor who is stuck there from an earlier visit. They get more than they bargain for when they discover that the company in control of the time machine has plans and secrets of its own. I am a sucker for time travel movies. I think it is because it is a way of creatively imagining what it would be like to be in a different world. Or as a character in the movie telegraphs, “the past helps us understand where we come from and where we’re going, so we don’t make the mistakes of the past. We understand now by understanding the past.” So really, all period pieces as well as time travel movies are merely metaphors or doorways to understanding ourselves now. This is why there is often a lot of historical revisionism going on in period pieces. People like to cast the past so much in terms of the present that they end up rewriting history to suit their own prejudices. Oh well. This movie wrestles with the romantic notion of chivalry and the medieval virtues of courage and honor in contrast with the warring brutality of the very same time culture and period. Much like our own that has great accomplishments in technology only to be abused by the greed and power-mongering of men. Crichton’s one note trumpet, a very good one at that, is precisely the scientific hubris of man. From The Terminal Man to Jurassic Park to Prey to Timeline, he writes of the dangers of scientific pursuit without moral restraint. As the lawyer in Jurassic Park says, “We’re so busy exploring if it can be done, we forgot to ask whether it should be done.” I love this motif and think it is apropos for our modernist world. The hero is a dumb California surfer type blond boy who has no real empathetic qualities, while the secondary character, Merrick, who decides to stay in the middle ages cause he studied it so well and fell in love with a woman back then, is the far more interesting part of the story, and a more likable candidate for hero.
The Cat in the Hat
Somewhat Recommended – but for adults. Well, not heartily, but for some good fun and laughs. Silly fun. Had a few great laughs at Mike Meyers humor and his Cowardly Lion impersonation. But you know, it’s sad how these filmmakers of kid movies have to put sexual innuendo into them. I’m not against some good subtle mature jokes that might go over kids’ heads, but come on, writhing dancing babes in mini-skirts, a reference to a centerfold porn, and a few other things seem inappropriate in a kid movie like this. And a pretty poor conclusion as the mom pats her irresponsible son on the head and says, he may be irresponsible, but he’s a good boy. Hello? Nothing like outright contradictions so typical of modern raising of children. Plus I don’t think a story about a prankster cat wreaking havoc is all that good of values for children whose real need is discipline and increasing responsibility as they grow up. Fun, yes, Chaos or havoc, no. The overly neurotic controlling little sister learns to loosen up and have some fun, and the slobbish undisciplined irresponsible brother learns that actions have consequences. But his is not a very strongly portrayed redemption. Could have been more clear.