Mickey17 (3/5 Stars)

A “Straw Man Argument” is a logical fallacy where an opposite position is distorted into an extreme version and then argued against. Instead of addressing the actual argument, a straw man argument presents a simplified or false version of the opponent’s stance.

Science fiction polemics, by their very nature, are straw man arguments. Because they take place in the future, the proponent gets to lay the groundwork for several hundred (maybe thousands) of years of distortion by making the audience assume that across the vastness of time and space the opposite argument when enacted into policy will naturally result in an inevitable and disastrous slope towards dystopia.

Here, in writer/director Bong Joon-Ho’s newest movie, Mickey 17, we are introduced to a world where the world is beset by environmental destruction and rampant organized crime. The remainder of the human race desperately seeks to leave a doomed Earth for a distant planet. A buffoonish politician (Mark Ruffalo) and his Machiavellian wife (Toni Collette) lay on thick plans of cultish demagoguery for the new settlement, which an utterly naive populace consumes without a hint of critical thought. One especially pitiful creature, Mickey Barnes (played by Robert Pattison) signs up to be an expendable, which apparently is a category of human being that agrees to be cloned for the purpose of suicidal tasks that range from being exposed to radiation, to being a test subject for biological weapons, to being a guinea pig for the development of vaccines. We are introduced to Mickey 17, who provides an elongated voiceover explanation as to the gruesome fate of versions 1-16.

For various reasons that need even more elongated voiceover explanation, this particular spaceship can only have one expendable on it, so Mickey is tasked with every single suicidal task the mission requires. He’s a great help. Indeed by his multiple sacrifices he saves many lives and is hard to imagine the mission succeeding at all without him. You would think these people would be grateful. But they aren’t, because apparently the future is full of shitheads. (Except for the one black woman. Black women, as we all ought to know, are magic negroes imbued with a sense of heightened morality brought upon by the extreme intersectionality of their historic victimhood).  They treat him as if everyone was still in grade school and he came to class with the wrong kind of shoes. I don’t think Mickey Barnes is even being paid.

Would society in the future actually not care about the experience of cloned people? Would we treat them as second class citizens? I ask you, given the world as it is today, why that would be a probable outcome? There have been many science fiction books and movies about cloned people. Can you think of one example where the author isn’t sympathetic to their plight? Do you hear anyone today arguing that clones might be a decent source of cheap slave labor? Wouldn't it be odd if our culture in the 20th-21st Century started out uniformly sympathetic towards clones and then turned with uniformed antipathy against them sometime in the future? And yet, in every single one of these science fiction books and movies, the creator assumes that this will be the case. If there is basically no one with antipathy against clones today, who exactly is Bong Joon-Ho arguing with here?

The answer I don’t think is any one segment of society that actually has antipathy towards clones. I believe Bong Joon-Ho’s argument is against capitalism and he is setting his scene way far into the future to suggest an inevitable outcome of the march of capitalism towards some dystopia where the lives of human beings become valueless in the face of corporations or contracts. It is telling that he wouldn’t be able to make that argument today, since all that has occurred since the introduction of capitalism as a ruling orthodoxy in society (starting say in England circa the Industrial Revolution) is the steady democratization of political power, an exponential rise in the standard of living, and the universal acceptance of human rights, at least in societies that use capitalism. There are still plenty of places that do not have capitalism, and the people there remain slaves to power monopolies. I’m not sure why Bong Joon-Ho, if he is so concerned about the plight of humans, can’t direct a satiric gaze at North Korea, the totalitarian state across the border, where people are treated like animals as we speak, not far off in the distant future.

One of the more influential pieces of culture in the past few years to originate from South Korea was Squid Game, a contemporary story about a group of capitalistic elites (mainly composed of gay texans and at least one Chinese man) pit debt-laden and put-upon South Koreans against each other in fights-to-the-death. Have any of these people ever heard of North Korea? Squid Game could take place there, except of course, for the prize money element.

Mickey 17 draws parallels (and maybe inspiration) from a better movie about science fiction clones. That would be 2009's Moon by Duncan Jones starring Sam Rockwell. That is a much better critique of capitalism. The main difference is that the original Sam Rockwell astronaut sold his genetic material to a corporation and gave them the permission to use and dispose of his clones on a remote lunar base. In that movie, the original guy is sitting at home getting paid for the work his clones are performing. His clones, although expendable and not privy to the truth, are treated with a nominal amount of respect. No one goes out of their way to insult them and the robot on the base is programmed to be helpful. It is a much more interesting take on the subject since it is much closer to an actual moral quandary that someday could occur.

Moon came out in 2009. At the time, it was impressive to see Sam Rockwell interact with himself on screen. In 2025, although I enjoyed the performance of Robert Pattinson in Mickey 17, I am no longer impressed all that much by seeing two of the same actor interact with himself. It’s not all that much of a novelty any longer. It is always nice to see Steven Yeun show up in a movie. It would have been better if he was around longer and was more important to the plot. Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette ham it up as real idiots and that go about doing real stupid things. One wonders how they could ever be put in charge of anything, and then one remembers that this takes place in the dystopic future where everything is possible.

Has it really been six years since Bong Joon-Ho made his previous film, the great Parasite. Do you notice the integral difference between that movie and this one? Parasite takes place in the present day. So, to make it believable, there couldn't be the underhanded straw man cheating that is possible in science fiction movies. Joon-Ho was forced to present characters that would be believable in our time. That constraint made for a much better movie. He should do more of that and, please, more often.

Poor Things (4/5 Stars)

 

It would be understandable if you thought of Director Yorgos Lanthimos as a satirist. His movies (“The Lobster”, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”, “The Favourite”) feel like satires. But to be a true satire, the movie has to comment, through comparison or metaphor, on reality or something akin. That is for something to be a satire, there must first be a real-life subject. WIthout that subject, the art can’t be satire. 

“The Lobster” and “The Kiling of a Sacred Deer” dealt with situations that never existed and people that never will exist. “The Favourite” took its inspiration from the real-life monarchy of Queen Anne of England, an accident of history that thrust the guardianship of a nation-state upon a woman who had lost 17 children in the space of 11 years to miscarraige and infant mortality. It could have worked as a comment on the absurdity of a political system based on hereditary rights, but Mr. Lanthimos seemed to take no interest in the story’s historical significance. Instead, it was a great movie about “mean girl” backstabbing.

Which brings us to “Poor Things” , his latest endeavor, a movie that seems like it is commenting on our world, but has its satiric power undercut from the fact that it appears to take place in an alternate universe. Like his other movies, it is probably best to not think too much about what it might mean. Yorgos is doing something weird and is doing so in a very competent and fascinating way. Just take it as it is.

Where and when does this movie take place? That is a paramount question you may be asking yourself. There are certain identifiable landmarks. The places are given European names: London, Lisbon, Paris. The characters dress in prudish aristocratic suits and dresses sort of like it might be the turn of the 20th century (circa 1900ish). Certain set pieces, like the medical auditorium where surgeons can watch whatever new operation may be the next big thing, are associated with that time and place. 

But this is not the turn of 20th century Europe. There are strange scientific inventions that were not there back then and indeed would be new today. It’s sort of like Steampunk, but not even that. The color scheme is more vibrant and varied than Steampunk as it pertains to the landscape, makeup and the costumes. (All three categories just won Oscars and you will understand why). In one scene, a band in what would pass for a normal upper class ballroom plays music with discordant make-believe instruments. 

Perhaps the best example of the weirdness of the time/place conundrum is how the characters speak. Again, they wear the tuxedos and dresses of upper class British socialites and speak with upper class British accents. But they also curse like sailors, like all of them. In fact, it is interesting how they go back and forth between the two. They will start off a conversation as if they are in a Merchant and Ivory film, get frustrated and drop a bunch of “F” bombs. Noone in the history of the world speaks like this. It is weird. And boy, you should see them dance. You won’t forget it.

The conceit of the movie is that this mad scientist, Godwin Baxter (played by Willem Defoe) comes upon a pregnant woman who has just attempted to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. The woman died but her unborn girl was still living. For reasons I couldn’t really understand, he performed the following experiment: he transplanted the brain of the daughter into the skull of the woman, and then, via an experiment that directly alludes to Frankenstein, he brought her to life and named her Bella Baxter. So, this person is both her daughter and her mother. Now Frankenstein was a metaphor for man’s relationship with God and the rights and obligations between the two. I have no idea what this mother/daughter relationship could be a metaphor for. I expect it may just be weird.

What you have then is a situation in which Bella Baxter (played by Emma Stone) is essentially an infant mentally in the body of a full grown woman. This provides the opportunity for some throw-down acting by Emma Stone who spends the first part of the movie doing a great impression of my infant son Hiro. Then, in that great tradition of “fish-out–of-water” movies, Bella goes into the world and confounds society with her childlike questioning of how things are. The movie does some shallow exploring of wealth inequality and scientific ambition, but settles down on its primary topic: Sex and men’s obsessive desire to possess women. Her first paramour Duncan Wedderburn is driven to madness by her free spirit. He is played by Mark Ruffalo who is increasingly funny in the movie as he more and more loses his mind.

This movie is notable due to the sheer amount of vulgarity present in it. Not only is there much cursing as noted above, but there is also quite a lot of nudity and sex. There have been more vulgar movies for a very long time, but I don’t think there has been one as vulgar as this one that has garnered so many Oscar nominations. It has been noted that taboo subjects in general society have changed. What we once considered “grown-up” categories: sex, violence and curse words are now commonplace. Instead, we shy away from the “n-word” and other racial epithets for fear of society’s retribution. This occurred in my life-time. Remember “There’s Something About Mary” in 1999. That was a shocking movie. “Poor Things” has ten times the vulgarity of that movie. And Emma Stone won the Oscar. As a result, there will be legions of young women interested in acting who will watch this movie and consider her performance to be a normal thing.

It is inherently unfair to satirize the past and not just because they are all dead and can’t defend themselves. To be more fair, try thinking of human beings that lived in past times not as older, but as younger. Take the general course of human history and consider that someone in 1000 A.D. would only have their own personal experience plus whatever amount of the past had been written down and taught to them as part of their education. Whereas, a person today, has not only their experience but Wikipedia in their smartphone, which is the entirety of human experience within a Google Search. If we equate age with experience, everyone today is much much older than anyone in the past.

Yorgos Lanthimos perhaps is sending up past times as an absurd place in terms of how it viewed sex. Back then, there were taboos on homosexuality, pre-marital sex, sex between races and sex between classes. You can look at it through our eyes today and consider it all backward and outdated, particularly for the reasons given for the taboos (i.e. religious, nationalistic, racial). But we now know things that they didn’t know back then. For instance, we have ways of telling whether a child is actually genetically related to its father and we know that certain diseases are caused by germs and some germs and not others can only be transmitted through sex. And with that knowledge, we have developed ways to make sex much safer than it was then in the past. If you forget all that, then the world in the past may seem like an absurd place. If you understand that there was an obvious, albeit misunderstood, connection between promiscuity and certain plagues breaking out in society, you would be less judgmental on the value placed in the past on a woman’s virginity or the taboo upon male homosexuality. You wouldn’t want your son to visit a whore or your daughter to sleep with a sailor. You wouldn't know exactly how it might happen, but you knew they could die or go insane (this is what syphilis does). If you were religious, and you probably were, you may conclude by experience that God didn’t like these actions because the people who did them were visited upon by strange and awful maladies.

And hey, if you didn’t consider the above, then “Poor Things” might be a satire. 

Avengers: End Game (5/5 Stars)

A victory lap is the perfect description of Avengers: Endgame. It is a good enough story on its own, but is not afraid to tack on much earned nostalgia. If Lord of the Rings: Return of the King garnered a Best Picture Oscar in part because it was the culmination of a gorgeously executed triology, I don't see why the same logic wouldn't apply to Avengers: Endgame which is the perfect culmination of ten years and twenty-two movies of Marvel storytelling

Leaving off where Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp ended, half the life in the universe has been snapped out of existence by Thanos and his Inifinity Guantlet. The Avengers not snapped out of existence conveniently include the original assembly: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, The Hulk, and Hawkeye. Captain Marvel shows up almost immediately after and they all get in a spaceship and track down Thanos. Unfortunately by the time they get to him, he has already destroyed the Infinity Stones. It's over. What happened cannot be fixed.

Then the movie jumps five years. It is a ballsy move and cements a feeling of reality over the events of Avengers: Infinity War. Usually comic book movies don't have dramatically acted scenes, but this one contains a particularly good bit of acting by Robert Downey Jr, as Tony Stark/Tony Stark, who excoriates Chris Evans, Steve Rogers/Captain America, decision several movies ago in Captain America: Civil War which broke up the Avengers and made Thanos harder to stop.

There is a catch of course as there must be. It comes in the form of Ant-Man who was stuck in the quantum realm when the Snappening happened and comes back five years later. (There is an emotional scene where Paul Rudd, Scott Lang/Ant-Man, finds his name on a memorial for those who died during the Snappening and when he reunites with his daughter.) Scott shows up at the Avengers headquarters with an idea that has to do with time-travel through the quantum realm. Much exposition is needed in this movie and quite a bit of it is people explaining things to Ant-Man who hasn't been around in the last five years. Most of it is quite funny.

Alot of this is quite funny. Some characters' arcs are rather dramatic like Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow. But other characters are firmly in the camp of comic relief. Two characters that have completely hit their stride are Hulk, who is now Professor Hulk, a big, green and unangry Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). Then there is Thor. What happened to him over the past five years is the stuff of comedic legends.

The question here isn't if Avengers: Endgame will reverse the outcome of Infinity War. We know it must simply due to sheer amount of marketable product that was snapped out of existence. The question is whether how this is accomplished is too predictable or too confusing. It isn't predictable and it generally makes sense (in a comic book science sort of way). A few times in the movie I was sitting there wondering how they were going to accomplish what they had set out to do and then how they did was quite satisfying.

Without giving away too much of the plot, the Avengers actually visit previous movies. Three in particular: The Avengers, The Dark World, and The Guardians of the Galaxy. The team splits up into groups to go back in time and retrieve what they need from those films. It is always when you have many full formed characters and then mix and match teams so people who have not really met or interacted before are doing so for the first time. Thor's interactions with the Guardians of the Galaxy is great in particular. Captain American fights himself and that is satisfying too. There is a lot of good stuff all over the place here. One particular moment, where Captain America finds himself standing alone in front of an evil army, and the moment right after, garnered cheers from the audience that I was in. I felt like cheering too. I really like these guys.

Following the example of other great culmination of movies, the last hour of Avengers: End Game has a lot of goodbyes in it. I believe the movie earned these moments. I look forward to the next twenty films.

The Avengers: Infinity War (5/5 Stars)

The last time a movie franchise achieved something akin to what Avengers: Infinity War accomplishes had to be The Lord of the Rings. That epic multi-Oscar winning movie was itself the third installment of a cohesive and perfectly realized trilogy of movies based on revered source material. Avengers: Infinity War leap-frogs that accomplishment. This movie is the culmination not of a trilogy but a universe of interconnected movies that spans nineteen films. Perhaps the HBO series Game of Thrones is the closest thing, but that TV series is still not of the same scale nor found in so many variations as the Marvel franchises that have climaxed into Infinity War. No, there really is nothing quite like Avengers: Infinity War in the history of movies.

Avengers: Infinity War has seventeen credited writers. It has two directors, Anthony and Joe Russo. It tells a story that attempts to involve all of Marvel’s outstanding franchises. These include:

Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man); Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Pots); Don Cheadle (James Rhodes/War Machine), Samuel L. Jackson (himself)

Thor: Chris Hemsworth (Thor); Tom Hiddleston (Loki); Idris Elba (Heimdall); Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk); Peter Dinkalge (Eitri)

Captain America: Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America); Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow); Paul Bettany (Vision); Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch); Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson/Falcon); Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier)

Guardians of the Galaxy: Chris Pratt (Peter Quill/Star-Lord); Zoe Saldana (Gamora); Karen Gillan (Nebula); Pom Klementieff (Mantis); Dave Bautista (Drax); Vin Diesel (Groot); Bradley Cooper (Rocket); Josh Brolin (Thanos)

Dr. Strange: Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange); Benedict Wong (Wong)

Spider-Man: Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man)

Black Panther: Chadwick Boseman (T’Challa/Black Panther); Danai Gurira (Okoye); Letitia Wright (Shuri)

Any of these franchises can and have carried a great movie on their own. (In particular, since 2013 Marvel has made a stretch of great movies including Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor:Ragnarok, and Black Panther). So one of the great obstacles Infinity War had to overcome is how to fit all the above in the same movie giving each and every character their own moment to shine. Amazingly, this is done. All of the above share this movie in equal heft and have their own moments to shine. I’m not sure how seventeen writers and two directors go about doing something like that, but its time to start handing out Oscars.

What may to be the hardest thing to accomplish is how consistently funny the movie is. I say this because there are two big things fighting against it. The first is that the main villain, Thanos (played by Josh Brolin) is trying and succeeding throughout the movie to kill off half of the universe. It is heavy stuff and is taken quite seriously, not least by Thanos. Two important characters from the Thor franchise, Loki and Heimdall, die in the first fifteen minutes. Another important character from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise dies at the half-way point. At the end, well, it seems like half the characters die. I won’t tell you which half, that would be a spoiler. The second is that this is an action-heavy blockbuster and huge spectacles and jokes generally do not generally complement each other. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs working is the first Ghostbusters movie. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs not working is the Ghostbusters remake. But in Infinity Wars, every joke lands. Dr. Strange is funny, Thor is funny, Star-Lord and Drax are funny, Spider-man is funny. Some characters are generally funnier than others. For instance Captain America and Black Panther were never particularly humorous, but almost everyone has their moments. There is also the added pleasure of seeing various characters interacting for the first time. At one point Thor meets up with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Bruce Banner has a scientific conversation with Shuri in Wakaanda. Dr. Strange and Tony Stark have this dialogue upon meeting.

Tony Stark: Nice cape. What's your job, again?

Dr. Strange: Protecting your reality, douchebag.

Infinity War is supposedly only the first of a two part movie, the other coming out next year. In that case, it is hard to judge the overall story at this point. But really, given how well this movie did what it set out to do, how could it be bad? Marvel is at its peak and the movies it has been making deserve to start getting serious recognition and not just for special effects. I expect Black Panther will run away with a serious amount of Oscars next year. Perhaps the year after Infinity War 2 will take the ultimate prize. As far as I’m concerned, Marvel has already earned it. At this moment, They are the best in the business.

Thor: Ragnarok (4/5 Stars)

For those that felt Thor would be more entertaining if his tragic flaw was stupidity as opposed to pride (see my review of “Thor”) and did not bother seeing the second movie because it looked more stilted and oppressive than the first, the third movie in the “Thor” saga is exactly the course-correction the character and story sorely needed.

One half of the story is business-as-usual. There is a political crisis in Asgaard. Odin has finally died (or has he?) and his long-lost daughter, Hella, played by none other than Cate Blanchett, has come back from the throne. As she is Odin’s eldest issue and apparently was his right-hand person in establishing Odin’s empire, she has a pretty good argument for being Queen. Thor, played by Chris Hemsworth, and his brother Loki, Tom Hiddleston, aren’t going for it though and try to start a fight. She defeats them handily and even crushes Thor’s mighty hammer.

Thor lost his hammer in the first movie, but whereas in that movie the event inspired soul-searching and just a little bit of crying, in this movie Thor’s loss of his hammer merely serves to knock a few power notches off the characters ability points so the fights he undertakes afterwards are fairer and funnier. Thor finds himself on a garbage dump planet ruled by the Grandmaster, Jeff Goldblum, who specializes in providing gladiatorial contests. The whole scene feels like the color scheme and outgoing nature of “Guardians of the Galaxy” has been injected into the Thor universe (or that Thor has taken a vacation in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” universe for a spell.) This works much better than one would perhaps think. Thor has never been especially funny, but becomes quite useful for initiating and returning jokes in this movie. It helps that Chris Hemsworth is an underrated comic actor and is particularly good at being a dumb blonde hunk (see the recent “Ghostbusters” reboot).

Surrounding Thor in the trash world are other routinely funny characters. Jeff Goldblum, an inspired piece of casting if there ever was, is essentially playing a meme-version of himself. Given that he is technically the bad guy, his weirdly punctual way of stilted speaking deprives any sense of foreboding in the story. He enters Thor in a non-consensual gladiatorial contest. There Thor meets a rock giant named Korg whose accent and style of speaking is reminiscent of the “The Flight of the Conchords.” That is no mistake. He is voiced by a director of that series, Taika Watiti, who also is the director of this movie. Thor also meets the reigning champion, none other than the Incredible Hulk, who has eschewed his Dr. Jekkyl-Bruce Banner persona for a running two years because this garbage planet actually likes the other guy. Thor without his hammer is a bit like Superman consistently surrounded by Kryptonite. It brings him down to earth where Hemsworth comic abilities allow the rest of us to laugh at him. It also helps that they shaved off his pretentious long hair.

The battle scenes in Thor: Ragnarok are spectacular and not so cringe-inducing as most other blockbuster movies. I’ve complained ad infinitum about nameless and countless humans being destroyed in great movie spectacles of violence without anyone in the story particularly caring. This is less of a concern when the characters are gods and cannot actually die or get all that much hurt. The gladiatorial contest between Thor and The Hulk is especially pleasurable.

Given that one-half of the movie is consistently funny and fun to be around, the other half seems to lull in parts. This has got to be the first time that I have written that Cate Blanchett does not inhabit the most interesting part of a movie. Here it is true, but it is mainly because the Thor-Hulk story-line is so entertaining. I got a great kick out of it and look forward to the next Thor movie.

p.s. If Thor is the God of Thunder and he can summon thunderbolts, why would he not be immune to tasers that use electric shocks.

Spotlight (5/5 Stars)

“Spotlight” is not so great as it is important. This reviewer attends the school that any subject matter no matter how unimportant has the potential to be elevated to perfection by a great artist. But there are some subject matters that are so important already any perceived effort at elevation may seem unduly indulgent or distracting. When Roger Ebert reviewed Steven Spielberg's “Schindler’s List,” he made a point to praise the absence of any of Spielbergian usual directorial flourishes. The movie was about the Holocaust. It would have been disrespectful to do anything fancy with the camera. Such is the same category “Spotlight” finds itself in. It is a movie about the group of reporters at the Boston Globe who broke the Catholic Church paedophilia scandal in 2002. Again the best praise I can give to the director/writer Thomas McCarthy is that he does not seem to be there at all. The direction is as straightforward as possible and nothing is heightened with unneeded suspense or dumbed down when a complicated explanation of court motions or journalistic procedures is needed. 

There are actually two stories in this movie and they complement each other. The Boston Globe in the late nineties was facing like every other local newspaper in America a crisis of falling readership and vanishing advertising revenue due to free digital content. There are layoffs and then there are more layoffs. The Globe is bought by the New York Times and they import a new head editor named Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber). The man is a Jew from Florida. That is to say he is not Irish Catholic from Boston like everyone else at the newspaper. It is his idea to look closer at a couple of stories the Globe has already done about a priest named Gagin accused of child abuse. A lawyer named Mitchell Garabedian said Cardinal Law of the Boston Archdiocese knew about Gagin for a long time and did not defrock him or turn him into the authorities. The court documents that may prove this accusation are sealed and Marty Baron wants to sue the church to unseal those documents.

There is not some great hurry to get onto this story by the people at the Globe. Nobody is really against it as much as it seems like they just don’t want to do it or even think about it. Only Mike Rezendes, the hungry young reporter played by Mark Ruffalo, is eager for the assignment. He is on screen about a minute before he already becomes everybody’s favorite character. Anyway the newspaper’s investigative team, Spotlight, takes on the task of delving a little bit deeper. The first task is to find the lawyer played by Stanley Tucci. Now this guy is a character and it matters too. His insight in one scene is enlightening to say the least.

He is talking to Mike and asks about the new editor. It is noteworthy that it is a Jew from out of town, he says, I should know I’m Armenian. (Mike is Catholic, but Portugese and lapsed). “It takes an outsider to put a light on this sort of thing. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse a child.” In other words, everybody is guilty in some respect.

What is perhaps the most astonishing thing for the reporters is how little needs to be done before the story becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And whenever they push a little harder and perhaps put a little more pressure on their targets, they get accusatory blowback about themselves. At one point the editor of Spotlight Walter 'Robby' Robinson (played by Michael Keaton) confronts a lawyer who has settled many cases with the church and demands a list of names. He provides one of the best “tough journalist” lines in the movie. “We got two stories here. One is about degenerate clergy. The other is about a bunch of lawyers turning child abuse into a cottage industry. Which one do you want us to write because we're writing one of them?” The lawyer is taken completely aback before he retorts with some emotion that all Robby has to do is check back issues of the Boston Globe. He sent them a list of twenty names five years ago. When Woodward and Bernstein were immortalized in “All the President’s Men” it made those two journalists look like super sleuths. This story is as much about a failure of journalism as much as it is a triumph of it. But even looking at it both ways, it becomes clear why local newspapers are very important. If the Boston Globe did not finally report this story, nobody would have. The national networks on TV certainly would not have come anywhere near this story. It is a very bad thing that investigative teams within local newspapers like Spotlight are becoming an extinct species.

For those interested in the subject matter (or all Catholics), this movie would make a great double feature with the documentary, “Deliver Us From Evil,’ which is about the church sheltering predator priests in California. (There is also a really good double feature in the journalism side. There I would recommend The Wire: Season 5). The complicity of the church is absolutely astounding and although there have been apologies and court settlements, very little has actually been done about the underlying policy that generates such an enormous amount of abuse. After all, what the Boston Globe took pains to explain is that this is not a few bad apples, it is a psychological phenomenon that springs from the celibacy requirement of priests and affects about 6% of the priest population. When the reporters learn that, they do the math. They were looking at 13 priests. Boston has 1500 priests. 6% of that population is 90 priests. Disturbingly they actually find 87 priests in Boston and confirm the number with an inside source from the church. It is a number that is absolutely stunning and there is a haze of silent desperation that hangs over the end of the movie. Sure it is good that the Globe finally uncovered the story, but if there were 87 predator priests in Boston, how did they miss it for so many years? The answer to that may lie in a conversation between the archbishop and the new editor. The archbishop states that it is in Boston’s good for its institutions to work together. Marty Baron disagrees. “Actually I feel for a paper to fulfill its function, it should stand alone.” Society needs its outsiders.

Spotlight should be any easy nomination for Best Picture and Best Writing (Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy). I would also like at least one actor to be nominated from the ensemble as a supporting actor. The movie has great performances by Stanley Tucci, Mark Ruffalo, and Michael Keaton. Take your pick. 

Foxcatcher (4/5 Stars)

The general rule for movies based on true stories is not how closely they follow the facts. That is the job of journalism. No, the general rule is whether the movie would be any good if it were completely fictional. And this strange and sad story of the richest convicted murderor in history, John Dupont, and his relationship with the U.S. Greco-Roman wrestling team, particularly the Olympic champion brothers Mark and David Schultz, does not need to actually be true to be effective. It is fully realized within itself. I suspect the most egregious violation of the true story may be the movie’s condensed time span, which makes it look like all the events took place within a couple of years (take a look at Dave Schulz’s ungrowing kids). Actually the real events took place over a decade, but I feel the makers (Director Bennet Miller et al.) made the right decision in glossing over that. It gives the psychological underpinnings of the tragedy more momentum. This is a very good if hard to watch movie. Hard to watch in the correct way, that is. I will elaborate on that phrase a bit later.

This is a great character study with a trio of great performances by some unlikely actors. Not that we did not know that Steve Carell and Channing Tatum could act. We saw some glimmers of that in Little Miss Sunshine for Carell and a trio of Soderberg movies for Tatum. But we have Oscar worthy transformation happening in Foxcatcher and I suspect most of the critical conversation around this movie will focus intently on just how good are these performances.

Let’s start with the Olympic wrestling brothers Schultz, Mark and David, played by Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo respectively. The most impressive thing right out of the gate is the spot on physicality of the Greco-Roman wrestling practices and matches. I took a year of wrestling in high school so I was looking to see if they got it right. They did and you know how you could tell? There is this great introduction to the brothers as they spar in a practice room. The shot is unbroken and lasts at least a minute or two. By the end of the shot both Channing and Mark are breathing heavily. That’s Greco Roman wrestling for you. It is the most quickly exhausting sport ever invented. Imagine what it would have been like to shoot take after take of any of these scenes. Here Channing is doing some extra overtime heavy lifting. (Mark has no match scenes). Physical performances are generally unnoticed as good acting. For instance, using Channing Tatum’s own career, I don’t recall any critics that praised his dancing in Magic Mike as skillful acting. Well I do and Tatum’s performance here is one of those performances I believe the vast majority of actors in the business would not be able to do. And the physicality of Channing really does matter because the character is extremely introverted and inarticulate. The background of Mark Schultz is one of isolation and alienation. His father left when he was two years old. He moved around the country constantly. He then followed his older brother into wrestling and may have excelled at it dramatically but the sport happens to be unpopular, unwatched, and not even paid. We are introduced to this gold medal winner collecting a $20 check for talking to a grade school classroom of kids about the Olympics. He has to tell the principal to make the check out to Mark Schultz, not Dave Schultz, because Dave is sick and Mark is substituting for him. “We both won gold,” Mark lamely explains. Mark goes back to his one room apartment where he eats Ramen alone.

And then the phone rings and we are introduced to Steve Carell’s version of eccentric millionaire John Dupont. John Dupont happens to be a fan of Greco-Roman wrestling. And since he inherited his millions and has no job, he has taken it upon himself to be the head coach of United States Wrestling. He is neither a wrestler nor a coach but he has a lot of money and is more than willing to pay top dollar for the nation’s best wrestlers. He phrases his desires in patriotic terms. This is good for America. I am a great man of vision. We need to take this country back. Mark Schultz, so obviously marginalized by society, becomes a true believer of sorts. Yes, he will move there and together they will put together a great wrestling team, the best in the world.

John Dupont’s childhood was disturbingly odd. His father left him at two years old. His mother raised him (along with a retinue of servants) at the gigantic Foxcatcher estate. His only friend was a kid his mother paid to hang out with him. John’s mother raises horses. Greco-Roman wrestling has to be the exact opposite sport from equestrian. That should explain quite a bit right there about their relationship. In one telling scene, John’s mother comes over to the gym to watch a practice. Normally John Dupont would just watch the practices, but here he calls all the world-class wrestlers over into a circle and proceeds to teach them Wrestling 101, that is until his mother leaves the room.

Steve Carell’s performance is hard to watch, much like it is hard to be around a person who obviously has no idea how to interact socially with other human beings. Not only has Dupont been isolated from most other living beings all his life his situation is compounded by never having encountered anyone on a level playing basis. He is automatically in charge due to the fact that he is the employer of everyone in the room. The result is a grotesque caricature of a human, someone whose personality feels like you are watching a train wreck in slow motion. Mix in the drugs, alcohol, and guns that Dupont has regular access to and the result is tragedy that in retrospect seems painfully obvious. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the story is that Mark and John get along for at least the first couple of years. They are utterly lost people being lost together.

The one sane person is Dave Schultz (played by Mark Ruffalo). Unlike his brother, he got married and had kids once he became an adult. That probably did a lot in making him a regular person. He goes to work for John Dupont to after a couple of years, the money being too good to turn down. But the heart of this story is how he finagles for his brother a way out of the damaging influence of Dupont. Mark, looking for a father figure, is pshycologically stricken when the man he has chosen starts abusing him in various ways. The most dramatic result of this is a scene that reminded me of Robert De Niro’s performance in Raging Bull, arguably the greatest acting performance ever. You will know what I mean. And then Dave Schultz comes in the room and puts his brother back together the only way a truly centered and empathetic person can. It’s kind of beautiful and John Dupont never truly gets Mark back. John Dupont once again loses his only friend in the world. Everyone deserves a nomination. That’s one for Carell, Tatum, and Ruffalo. This is the best-acted movie of the year so far.

The Avengers (3/5 Stars)

It’s Okay!

 I never read comic books as a kid nor did I have a ton of video games, but I did own action figures, mostly Star Wars and Legos. Action figures, unlike books and video games, do not come with their own story lines so kids had to use their imaginations in order to have fun. I do not recall any particular story of mine that is worth repeating suffice to say they all had one thing in common: continual cartoonish violence. You know the kind where you take two action figures and you harmlessly smack them against each other and make kablooie noises. I remember it fondly in that odd nostalgic way people tend to glorify the stupidity of children (or innocence, either one), but I would not insist on making a feature film out of it, which, I would argue is essentially what “The Avengers,” is: A story composed of the kind of action sequences I would have come up with when I was ten years old....and had access to several hundred million dollars.

Don’t get me wrong. “The Avengers,” is okay and I must admit I haven’t the slightest idea how they could have made it better. It seems fated to be mediocre due to the cast of characters that are included. The Avengers are composed of Iron Man/Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) a genius mechanic/billionaire who wears an indestructible suit that can fly and has plenty of machine guns and missiles. Then there is the Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (played by Scarlett Johansson) who is good at martial arts and uses pistols. Then there is Hawkeye/Clint Barton (played by Jeremy Renner) who is good at archery. Then there is The Hulk/Bruce Banner (played by Mark Ruffalo) who is a brilliant scientist who involuntary turns into an uncontrollable green monster with unlimited strength whenever he gets angry. Then there is Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth) who is an immortal demi-god with an all-powerful hammer that can summon lightning storms. Finally, there is Captain America/Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans). He has a patriotic uniform and a nifty shield. It should be fairly obvious that these superheroes aren’t exactly equal. I mean Captain America may be strong, but not as strong as the Hulk, and he can’t fly like Iron Man, and he has no ability for stealth like the Black Widow, and he has no long range ability like Hawkeye, and he isn’t educated like Bruce Banner or Tony Stark. In fact, he really doesn’t know anything about the last fifty years because he was cryogenically frozen during that time. (He is otherwise their leader though.) Contrast that with Thor, who as an indestructible and immortal god should be able to beat the tar out of every other Avenger in every scenario. The presence of a superhero such as Thor also requires the story to have a super-villain with an almost equal amount of power as him. Enter his brother, the semi-god Loki and an army of mean-looking aliens with supposedly superior technology.

The movie stages two rather huge battle sequences. One takes place on a flying aircraft carrier (largest waste of taxpayer money EVER) and another in Midtown Manhattan. Besides the death of one person, it may surprise you that nobody else gets seriously hurt or dies. No superheroes, no military personnel, and no civilians end the movie with anything more than the faintest scrapes, cuts, or bruises. In fact, I would argue the greatest special effect used during the full scale destruction of a completely inhabited Manhattan is the framing of the shots in such a way that we never actually see anybody getting hurt. This sense of total unreality is what reminded me of playing with plastic toys as a kid. Nothing is real. Otherwise Tony Stark would be dead ground meat in his fancy suit after every battle he is in. And can the Hulk really survive a multitude of rockets launched point blank into his face without a single blemish occurring?

 For some reason it has become increasingly difficult for blockbusters to achieve the very reason they exist: to excite and thrill. It is not hard to have violence that is exciting. It simply must include actual danger or actual pain or the threat of actual pain. To demonstrate how little you need, take a look at the movie, “Black Swan.” In particular, the scene where the main character notices a cut near her nail cuticle, tries to fix it, and accidentally pulls off a strip of her skin. When I watched that it made me recoil. Why then would Thor knocking Iron Man 100 feet into the air with his magic hammer have little to no effect at all? Well, because it results in nothing but a dazed look. It must not have hurt. A movie with action sequences that have no effect on the characters is not exciting. It is desensitizing. Pretty soon it does not matter how big the explosions are, all I recognize is their impotence. What is more, when I do not understand how things happen, I stop caring pretty soon if they happen at all. I don’t get how Iron Man can survive all the blows he takes. I don’t understand how The Hulk can beat up a floating leviathan one thousand times his size. And will someone please tell me how the hell Scarlett Johansson can beat up burly men three times her size. She has no muscles. None.

 I suppose some of this has to do with the MPAA. There is this strange rule out there that allows PG-13 movies all the gunfire, explosions, and metropolitan destruction they want just as long as you do not see anybody getting hurt. However, if you wanted to see a man realistically cut off his own arm like James Franco does in “127 Hours” you would get an R rating. In effect, violence is morally okay just as long as you don’t show the consequences of it. Oh, will someone think of the children. They are our future. But unreal hammed up violence is not in itself bad. I’ve seen plenty of movies I loved that worked just like that. The best of director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Planet Terror, Machete, Desperado) excels in that sort of thing. The difference though is that these movies are fun exploitation movies that don’t give us a bunch of scenes containing impassioned speeches about the importance of it all. “The Avengers,” needs to be more uniform in its purpose. If you are going to make the action sequences ridiculous then make the characters and dialogue ridiculous, and do it the whole way through. And please no intended-to-be-taken-seriously-patriotism. This country deserves better than that. “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” was a great action movie. So, for that matter, was “Black Dynamite.” “The Avengers,” works best when it treats itself like it should: a joke. There are enough self-referential and belittling jabs that make the movie pretty funny throughout its run time. Quite a lot of these are provided by the best character, Tony Stark, played brilliantly as always by Robert Downey Jr. Mark Ruffalo, the nth incarnation of Bruce Banner, does a solid job as well. I still wish Thor’s weakness was stupidity and not arrogance (see my review of “Thor”) and I never saw Captain America’s movie so I guess I missed the part where it makes sense for our symbol against Nazism be a guy that looks like the poster child for Aryan machismo. Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner like most interesting actors continue their star rising descent into less interesting movies.

Shutter Island (4/5 Stars) February 24, 2010

A heartbreaking study of staggering sadness.

Teddy Daniels fought in the Second World War. He was there when the Allies liberated Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp. He saw the emaciated shrunken faces of the prisoners. He walked past frozen piles of murdered corpses, too many to count. Him and some of the other American soldiers took the German soldiers stationed there, stood them up against a wire fence, and shot them execution style. It wasn’t warfare. It was murder and Teddy knew it. Teddy came home and married a woman he dearly loved. Their marriage was strained. One day she found a closet full of whiskey flasks. She asked him why he drank so much in a compassionate and worried voice. “I killed a lot of people in the war,” he replied throat full of guilt and sorrow. Teddy witnessed cruel random tragedy twice. His wife died from smoke inhalation when a pyromaniac set fire to their apartment building. He has dreams of her almost every night. They embrace in mercy and forgiveness and then she burns up from within and turns into ashes in his arms. He is left alone grasping the air around him.

Such is the background of the U.S. Marshall (played by Leonardo Dicaprio) who is investigating the disappearance of a patient at an insane asylum for the criminally insane in Martin Scorsese’s newest movie Shutter Island. The trailers suggest that this movie is from the horror genre but don’t be mistaken, this is out and out film noir and it fits in perfectly with its time period, the Golden Age of Film Noir, the early 1950s. 

The plot twists and turns so much that I feel compelled to leave most of it out of my review simply because I would probably need to see the movie again just to make sure I have it right. In the end though, the plot itself is just a red herring. The real story here is in the character development. When Martin Scorsese won his first Oscar for the The Departed he joked that it was the first movie he had made that had a plot. He’s back to his old ways in an ingeniously disguised way. 

But what do I mean that this isn't a horror film. Well, in your regular horror film the criminally insane (like say Hannibal Lector or Mike Myers) are explained just enough to completely freak you out. Here, the crazy people are explained to the point where you really really understand why they’ve gone crazy. Instead of being afraid of them, you empathize with them. And let me tell you, it takes some serious trauma to become criminally insane. Keep in mind that Teddy Daniels is the sane one in this story. Everyone other patient (including the 67th) has gone through worse. One place where this really shows is in the casting. The woman who went missing was guilty of drowning her three children. She isn’t played by a deformed hag of a woman. Scorsese instead chose to cast Emily Mortimer, an actress who can easily play the ‘sweetest woman in the world’ roles (Lars and the Real Girl.) Filling in other supporting roles are inherently compassionate actors like Ben Kingsley (Ghandi, Schindler’s List), Michelle Williams (Synecdoche New York), and Mark Ruffalo (Eternal Sunshine). Scorsese doesn’t want to just scare us. He wants to break our hearts. 

Scorsese is a master at empathy. Watching his movies makes one grow as a person. He chooses perhaps the hardest possible characters to relate with and provides the viewer with an opportunity to sympathize and understand them. (A violent loner like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. An inarticulate brute like Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. Even someone as inhuman as Jesus Christ himself in The Last Temptation of Christ.) Here, he chooses the criminally insane as his muse. I can’t imagine any other filmmaker doing a better job. I heard that in the late 70s Scorsese was hospitalized with deep depression and apparently thought that Raging Bull would be the last movie he would make. I don’t know if that’s the cause, but it is certainly clear that this guy understands suffering inside and out. 

Film noir as a genre grew into popularity at a distinct time in American History. World War II had begun and ended. The Korean War, which is usually forgotten but killed thousands of Americans started just a few years later. The Soviet Union had just gotten the bomb and America was in full Red Scare mode. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder had yet to be identified but must have existed on a grand scale. Take a look at the classic film noir movies then: Hardboiled cynical men, untrustworthy women, nihilistic plots and gloomy photography. Everybody smoked and drank nonstop. This movie has the same dark feel to it. The mood is so encapsulating that at times I thought it would have worked better had it been shot in black and white. There’s an especially cool cinematic trick Scorsese used in the dream sequences to give it an eerier than usual feel. Pay special attention to the cigarette smoke. It seems to be going in reverse sucked back into the cigarette. I can’t wait for this guy’s next movie.

Where the Wild Things Are (5/5 Stars) October 31, 2009

I’ll Eat You Up!
Yells the nine-year-old Max (newcomer Max Records) to his mother (Catherine Keener) in the feature film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book. That book had a measly ten sentences but plenty of good drawings. Director Spike Jonze has faithfully incorporated everything he could and like all great adaptors, has added on an incredible amount of depth, emotion, and cinematic scope. 
Max is a rambunctious little kid with the normal inclinations of a nine year old. By that I mean he’s impulsive, impotent, and often times stupid. (Too harsh? well imagine what you would think of Max's actions if he was forty.) In the first fifteen minutes, he tears up his sister’s room in revenge of a perceived slight; he rudely yells at his mother in the middle of her date, and he runs away from home in a fury. Then, like in the book, Max gets on a boat and sails to a far away island: the Land of the Wild Things. The Wild Things are a godless lot of beasties who have the emotional maturity of nine year olds. Max finds them in a familial crisis and arrogantly suggests that he can fix everything and keep the sadness away in the Wild Thing Kingdom. He even lies about having special powers like a sadness shield. The Wild Things crown Max as their king and Max declares the “wild rumpus to start!”

Jonze never expressly says anything but the Wild Things can be metaphorical on many levels. I took their current problem (One member has been spending more time with other things on the island) to mean any kind of familial strife. In this story it could pertain to Max’s sister abandoning him to play by himself, or it could refer to the divorce in Max’s family (He gets mad at his mother in the beginning because she has brought home Mark Ruffalo, a man who isn’t Max’s father). When the Wild Things entrust Max with the job of fixing everything, it is sort of like parents entrusting their own kid to fix their marriage. This is a job Max zealously accepts because he feels he knows best anyway. What makes this movie special is that the Wild Things take Max’s ideas seriously, carry them out, and expect them to work. And unlike any children’s movies I’ve ever seen, Max’s ideas are those a nine year old would come up with. What makes this movie especially sad is that they have the exact results they should have. 

For example, Max’s first idea is to build an awesome fort. The Wild Things eagerly start working on it. They build the best fort ever, just the sight of it is something to behold. But it doesn’t work in uniting the Wild Things family. All the same problems continue. Next Max comes up with the idea of having a giant dirt clod fight. It’s a great fight, but as what happens with all fights, people get hurt and the same problems become even worse. Eventually the Wild Things become disillusioned and angry with Max. They blame all their problems on him. There is an especially sad scene where they ask Max if he has any powers at all. Max gets up and does a robot dance (this dance was seen earlier when he tried to cheer up his mom after she had gotten bad news at work). It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. None of the Wild Things are impressed. This is the closest I’ve seen a movie get to portraying the helplessness a child must feel when their family is breaking up. Max knows something is wrong but can’t do anything about it because he’s only nine and all he is good at is building forts. 

The movie takes a dark turn near the end when the Wild Things, who are known to eat things up, turn on Max. This is probably the few scenes that left the children in the test audiences screaming and gave the producers enormous fits. Is it scary? You bet. Is this movie okay for children to watch? Let's just say I would take my kid to see it the day he turned nine. A movie isn’t great that doesn’t provoke its audience. What makes some movies better than others is how it does so. There are scary beasties in this movie, but they are handled responsibly. I doubt many kids will get nightmares. More likely they will get ideas for Halloween. 

This movie has guts. It is perhaps the only kid’s movie I’ve ever seen that deals with childhood guilt. Most other movies won’t even dare of suggesting that a kid could be culpable of something. But in this one, Max wrongs people. It is true that kids can be cruel, but often times they are cruel on accident. They don’t know any better. When a child does something bad impulsively and then learns the evil in the actions the emotional consequences may cover a vast arc from fear, injustice, anger, doubt, realization, guilt, sadness, fear of reprimand, and finally fear of loss of love. The depth of this movie is very rare indeed. 

This is not just a story about a kid tromping around in fantasy land realizing cliche life lessons. The problems in this movie can't be solved by a bake sale or science fair experiment prize money. Like problems in real life, they can't be solved at all by a nine year old. That's precisely what every other kid's movie gets completely wrong. They all sidestep the fact that being a kid is a helpless, impotent existence. This movie understands that perfectly. And although it is a complete fantasy it still feels more real than any other movie that has ever been concerned with the nature of being a stupid little kid. The movie ends after Max exhausts all of his rebelliousness on the island with a version of the book’s classic scene of atonement. Max returns home and is greeted by his worried mom with a hug, forgiveness, and his dinner still hot. Perfect.

There are some reviews I’ve read that call this movie dull in parts. I can understand that, but one should also keep in mind this: Max is just a kid. What may seem trivial to adults can mean a whole lot to a nine year old. Since this movie refuses to cater to an adult viewpoint and keeps everything at a child’s level, enjoying it is sometimes a test of empathy. Surely most adults have grown up past the age where forts are exciting, but imagine Max’s wonder as he explores his. Or imagine a kid’s comfort and security of sleeping in a big pile of Wild Things. Or simply the coolness of being able to play dirt clods with big people on an equal level at that age. I got a great kick out of all of it.

This is Max Records first movie. This is an incredible performance that is sort of akin to Tom Hanks’ performance in Castaway. Max is in every frame of the movie and he spent most of the time on the set acting with inanimate objects. Keep in mind the facial expressions and voices of the Wild Things were added in later. He carries the entire film. Max, the actor, is especially good at communicating subtle emotion through facial expressions. (Think the opposite of Macauley Culkin) Just consider his expression when a teacher tells him the sun is going to die someday or the look on his face when he sees his mother with Mark Ruffalo. This is the best child performance since Haley Joel Osment’s in “The Sixth Sense.” Like Haley, Max Records deserves a nomination for Best Actor. 

If I am being honest I will have to admit that this movie moved me to the point where my eyes watered. Yes technically I cried during this movie. It doesn’t happen often. (The last time was while watching “The Sixth Sense.”) But when it does it is imperative to admit it and reflect upon it because it suggests that the movie (though obviously fictitious and in this case not even attempting to be in the realms of reality) struck a nerve by portraying something I felt was not only emotionally raw and enormously empathetic, but above all, true. In this movie there is truth. It deserves nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and especially best Costumes or Makeup depending on whatever the Wild Things qualify as. I don’t believe that Where the Wild Things Are is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. It is the best movie I’ve seen this year. and I believe it is a movie that will last for years to come much like the book it was adapted from.