VAGUE SPACE

Into Darkness

I'm not a Star Trek fan, generally.  I never watched the original series in re-runs, I did watch several of the movies that resulted but I don't really remember them, and I only occasionally watched The Next Generation and none of its spinoffs over the past decade.  But I did enjoy the JJ Abrams reboot in 2009 and I was looking forward to the sequel that came out this weekend (and disappointed at the box office).  And it did not disappoint me.  A really strong action movie with strong characterization, some callbacks to the best of the original Star Trek films, and one of the great bad guys in film.  This is likely to be JJ's last Trek film as he will move on to take over the Star Wars franchise, a franchise I certainly was more invested in as a child than Trek.  But he has left the films in really good shape.

Into Darkness starts off with a seemingly one-off sequence on a primitive red planet where Spock risks his life to save their civilization from a volcanic eruption.  But there are consequences to the Enterprise's interference in the fates of these people and they reverberate over the entire film.  At the same time, an evil former member of the star fleet -- or whatever entity it is that the Enterprise crew works for -- attacks an installation in London and kills dozens.  This brings Kirk and crew together to hunt him down in the only place the federation will not go -- a planet controlled by Klingons, on the eve of a potential all-out war with the enemy.  It turns out to be a really great setup and although the "twist" is somewhat predictable, the plot was believable and executed well, which is something that can rarely be said about these big budget action films, which often spend so much time on effects that they miss the fact that the movies don't make any kind of logical sense.  Logic, though, does not escape the filmmakers here and what results is a fun, thrilling ride that delivers on high expectations.

Looper and The Grey

I recently watched Looper on-demand and The Grey on Netflix.  Both films were at the top of the 2012 Movies of the Year at /Filmcast, a podcast about movies that I enjoy.  So I'd been meaning to watch them.  Both were very good films, but not at all what I expected in either case.  Which is why I'm reviewing them together.  I would definitely recommend and I would definitely recommend without spoilers but there are spoilers after the jump so I would say stop reading if you haven't seen them, after this first paragraph.  Looper is a time-traveling story set in 2044 featuring Joseph Gordon-Leavitt and Bruce Willis as the younger and older version of the same person -- a "looper", a hired assassin for the mob who kills people sent from the future because it's impossible to get rid of a body in 2074, apparently, due to tracing technology or something.  And time travel is very expensive and highly illegal, which is why only the mob is using it (well, probably the government too but they don't get into that).  The story is set in Kansas City, I believe, and the assassinations take place in a cornfield nearby, and the depiction of this bleak 2044 is both compelling and realistic -- very much mirroring the haves/have-nots and desperation of ordinary people that was depicted in Ready Player One and that appears at this point a very potential future for the United States.  And Gordon-Leavitt, with a prosthetic nose and good acting, kind of almost could pull off being a younger Bruce Willis, although it's actually mostly distracting that he doesn't look like himself.  Willis is on screen a lot but I'm not sure he pulls off his role quite as well and almost seems too old to be playing Gordon-Levitt's 30 year older self, if that makes any sense.  But overall, it was a really good film.  Yet not anything like I expected by then end.  As for The Grey, it stars Liam Neeson as one of the survivors of a plane crash in Alaska (I think among oil riggers or something) and the central conflict is that they've crashed near a wolf den and these are some badass huge killer wolves who are going to make the dwindling group of survivors wish they'd just died in the crash.  This film is beautifully shot and features amazing depictions of the harsh cold weather that at first seems to be their major threat (until the wolves appear) and really delivers a punch with every scene of rampaging wind and snow.  There's almost no break in the sound and fury of the weather for much of the first half hour after Neeson's character awakens from the crash.  But while this film was marketed to take advantage of Neeson's kick-ass Taken character, except this time he is kicking wolf ass, that is nowhere near what the movie turns out to be.  And again, it's so unconvential that I have to talk about it in the spoiler section but yeah, it was another excellent film.

OK so spoilers ahead....

Identity Thief, or The Second Career of Jason Bateman

Jason Bateman, child actor, has an incredibly extensive imdb for someone I presumed disappeared between late 80s TV show "Valerie" (later, The Hogan Family) and 2003's "Arrested Development", although most of his roles in that period were in TV movies and short-lived TV series like "Simon" and "George & Leo" and "Some of My Best Friends" that I do not even vaguely remember.  But after the brilliance that was Arrested Development, Bateman has become something of a leading man, starring in Juno, Hancock, Couples Retreat, Horrible Bosses, Up in the Air, The Switch, The Change-Up, and his latest Identity Thief, which opened over the weekend.  Of course, other than Juno and Up in the Air (both of which he was only a supporting star in), these movies haven't been particularly high quality or even low quality, although many made a lot of money and Bateman appears to now be making a lot of money, all from the "success" of Arrested Development.  And since I am obsessed with all things Arrested Development and give a free pass to pretty much anything any alumnus of the show does (with the exception of whatever the hell that show Will Arnett does with Christina Applegate that I've tried to watch a few times and can never make it through a full episode), I have seen several of the Bateman second career starring movies and again, with the exception of Juno and Up in the Air, there hasn't been a whole lot of good.  Or funny.  I mean, most of the premises were bad in the first place -- The Change-Up in particular -- but Horrible Bosses starred Bateman, Charlie from Always Sunny, and Jason Sudeikas from SNL and yet was only mildly amusing.  Bateman seems like a funny guy -- I heard him in an extended interview with Howard Stern this week and on the Daily Show -- but who is picking these roles for him?  Again, he is making a lot of money, and he will hopefully be back in great form in the new Arrested Development series premiering in May, but he told Howard that he originally turned down the part in Juno (largely because he had just had a new baby but also because he wasn't blown away with the script) and it was only when the actor that signed on pulled out a few weeks before filming that he was called up again, given a piece of the back end, and agreed to join the cast (largely because his new baby was crying all the time and keeping him up at night and he thought "well, I could just go to Vancouver and film a movie for 3 weeks")  So yeah.  Not exactly a lot of wise decisions in film selection.  

Argo

I haven't seen a lot of movies at the theater this year, as my foot injury has made it pretty impossible to sit for multiple hours in a multiplex but now that I'm feeling much better, I was able to make it to the theater over the weekend to see what is -- admittedly against not much competition -- the best film I've seen this year.  Ben Affleck's Iran hostage crisis movie Argo is incredibly tense, gripping, dramatic, funny, engaging, and just an edge-of-your-seat grown-up thriller in a way that does not happen frequently enough in the movies these days.  Some reviewers have quibbled with Affleck's acting (he isn't exactly commanding in the role) but everyone I've read has universally praised the film, particularly its tension, and I wholeheartedly agree.  For a movie where the ending is known (it's based on real events), I couldn't believe how frightened I was for the safety of the characters throughout.  Just a really well made film.  By Ben Affleck.  Yes, that Ben Affleck.  That's actually three really good directing movies in a row for him, following Gone Baby Gone and The Town with what is definitely his best effort, a likely Oscar contender.

The movie starts out with documentary style footage of the events in Iran that led to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 that deposed the evil, westernized Shah that the U.S. and Britain put into place in the '50s, and replaced him with Ayatollah Khomeini, whose oversized image looms over this film and pretty much the entirety of Iran.  Seems to me the Iranians traded a secular despot for a religious one and that seems a horrible tradeoff but that discussion is for another film.  When the U.S. gave the Shah asylum so he could receive cancer treatments, protests against America (already very much hated in the country) broke out on the streets in front of our Embassy.  After a few tense days, the mostly student protesters stormed the embassy grounds and took some 60 American diplomats hostage, for what ended up being the next 444 days, costing Jimmy Carter his presidency and ushering in the era of Reaganism and the rebirth of conservatism that our economy is still reeling from today (thanks Iran!).  But anyway, while the films starts with some harrowing scenes of the embassy takeover and its aftermath, the story focuses instead on a little known side story -- the six U.S. diplomats who escaped the embassy during the raid from the protesters and took refuge at the Canadian ambassador's private residence.  That is the story of Argo, with Ben Affleck playing a CIA agent specializing in "exfiltration" (pulling people out of highly dangerous situations) and he becomes tasked with planning these 6 Americans' rescue while the president and State Department try (in vain) to gain the release of the publicly held hostages.

A Better Life

We are such a shitty people.  Or the people we choose to elect are shitty and filled with such hatred and fear that we govern in the shittiest way possible, blaming the weak and the poor for all the problems that our shitty elected officials fail to resolve.  It's sad.  And we are getting worse every year it seems.  A Better Life is a movie directed by Chris Weitz that came out last year and got Demian Bichir -- Nancy's Mexican drug lord husband on Weeds -- an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.  And it's a really good film.  But in the end it just highlights how shitty of a people our "they hate us for our freedom" country we have become.  And probably have always been.  Immigrants have been blamed for everything rotten in our past and they're still being blamed today, even though the Mexicans coming across the border didn't cause 9/11 (some of the terrorists came via Canada and no one is proposing a fence on that side), didn't cause any economic crisis of ours (no, that was the rich bankers and Wall Street executives and highly paid politicians), and didn't create the drug problems that have made their own country a war zone (that was our rich country's failed "war on drugs").  Yet throughout the past decade and to this very day, a certain segment of the American population (read: racists) are so busy blaming "them" for all our society's ills that they can't see that building a stupid fucking fence isn't go to make this country a better place.  It's just going to continue to erode our freedom. 

Bill's Post-Surgery Movie Guide

So one of the advantages / disadvantages of being largely immobile and housebound for the last 12 weeks is that I've had a lot of time to not only read (advantage) but also to watch a lot of television (disadvantage) and catch up on a bunch of movies that came out in 2010 and 2011 that I hadn't seen.  Some have been really really good.  Some have been just mediocre.  But for the most part, anything that could occupy up to 2 hours of my time and distract my mind enough from the mind-numbing pain in my foot was (is) a good thing.  Anyway, here's a list of movies I've seen in order of recommendation.

Drive (2011)

Ryan Gosling stars as "Driver," an unnamed stunt-car driver who does side jobs for criminals including getaway driver for a bank heist in the opening scene.  Gosling's character exudes a calm coolness but other than his incredible driving ability, he doesn't particularly appear to be out of the ordinary, definitely not a violent or criminal kind (despite his part-time vocation).  And the opening third or so of the movie runs kind of slow, focusing on the taciturn Driver and his growing affection for a new neighbor, played by the beautiful Carey Mulligan (who can turn any role into a charmer), and her young son.  But when Mulligan's husband gets out of jail, things turn upside down and the movie starts to pick up speed.  And all of a sudden -- well, I dare not reveal anything else for fear of spoiling what is just a non-stop amazing, action-packed thrill-ride of a second half that transforms Gosling's character from quiet everyman into -- something else.  I'm not sure I cared for the ending, because it felt unnecessary, but otherwise this is a really great film... slow to start and not really hyped very well but pretty much every guy in my readership will enjoy it.  It's definitely got a Tarantino vibe to it, not in the dialogue at all, but in the spirit of it all, underplayed by Gosling but perfectly played.  Oh, and Albert Brooks and Bryan Cranston and Ron Perlman are all pretty damn awesome in supporting roles.

Paradise Lost 3

HBO aired last week the final part of the Paradise Lost documentary trilogy covering the West Memphis 3 and the murders of Christopher Byers, Michael Moore, and Steve Branch, a trio of 8-year-olds, back in 1993.  The whole sordid affair is a true tragedy on multiple levels -- the unbelievable death of these young boys, the sham of a trial of three teens for "Satan worshipping" that led to their conviction for the boys' murders, and then the gross incompetence and/or malice of a criminal justice system that spent the past 15 years denying the wrongly accused any chance at a re-trial despite the complete lack of evidence and a public outcry over the results after the first Paradise Lost documentary appeared in 1996.  But finally, in August of 2011, after a series of fortuitous twists including new evidence, strident supporters, celebrity involvement -- particularly of Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks -- and most importantly, this movie shows, the election of the original trial judge to the Arkansas State Senate, allowing his position to be replaced by a new judge who didn't feel it as a personal affront to ever grant an appeal to the West Memphis 3, the wrongly accused Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Misskelley, Jr., were finally, belatedly, after 17 years in a prison cell for a crime they almost definitely didn't commit, set free.

Inside Job

Last week, I highly recommended watching the 2010 Academy Award winning Best Foreign Language Feature In a Better World, which I would still highly recommend, but I implore all my readers to wait on that film and run don't walk to your nearest video store or streaming venue and watch the 2010 Oscar winning Best Documentary Inside Job.  I don't care if you don't care about documentaries or financial industries or the root cause of this horrible world recession we plunged into in 2008 and still haven't recovered from, but if you give a shit about anything, you will watch Charles Ferguson's amazing documentary.  Because you need to learn as I did just how freaking fucked we all are.  I've read a bunch of books and seen a bunch of movies about the collapse of the financial industry that created the great and never-ending recession but none of them were as clear about who was responsible, about which individual people actually caused this global financial meltdown.  And which people remain not only unaccountable for their actions but also remain 100% in power in running our economy at this very moment.  This is not a political movie.  I would have loved it if all the blame were laid at the feet of the idiotic presidency of George W. Bush, but it's not.  These problems started under Reagan, were accelerated under Clinton, and only hit the highest heights of fraud and criminality under Bush the dumber.  But the people behind the scenes, the non-politicians wielding all the power behind the presidents and congressmen were not only the same under Clinton and Bush, but they remain in power today under President Obama, Mr. Hope and "Change".  Tim Geithner.  Hank Paulsen.  Larry Summers.  Laura Tyson.  Ben Bernanke.  They all hold major roles in the Obama administration in economic policy making roles.  And they were all responsible for the collapse of our economy.  Seriously.  Not that Alan Greenspan wasn't a huge, huge major cause of the problem -- he's just since retired.  And a whole boatload of key Bush advisors are held accountable in the film, some of them on camera (which is awesome), but again, this film is not political.  The people who created this problem were regulated by the same people who created the problem (watch the film, you'll see -- Hank Paulsen, head of the Treasury during the end of the Bush presidency was the CEO of Goldman Sachs during the early part of the decade when all these credit derivatives shit began).  And they are still in power.  It's stunning.  It's appalling.  It will make you angry and make you want to march on Wall Street today.  Which you should.  But most of all it will make you informed.  And an informed public is our absolute last final hope of saving our system.  And our future.  Because the people in charge are the same greedy fucks that fucked it all up in the first place.  And they are in the process of just doing it again. This must stop now.  Please watch this film.

"The documentary — which blasts members of both political parties, including President Barack Obama — is a succinct, breathtaking, hope-draining examination of America's corrupt financial façade."  Tom Long, Detroit News

"Despite the potentially brain-numbing complications of his subject, I had no trouble following the sickening spiral of deceit and arrant aggrandizement that led to trillions of dollars of losses and, to date, not a single prison sentence."  Peter Rainer, CS Monitor

"Ferguson concludes that irresponsible acts from the rich and elite have gone unpunished, and with a lack of financial reform post-2008 the bust is destined to happen again. This is a compelling documentary that will have you leaving the cinema absolutely seething." -Simon Reynolds, Digital Spy

• Download A Silver Mt. Zion - "Movie (Never Made) - live".mp3

Let's kill first the banker.
With his professional demeanor.
Let's televise and broadcast the raping of kings.
Let our crowds be fed on tear gas and plate glass.

Because the people united is a wonderful thing

I know that you're dying.
And I know I'm unwell.
And together we sashay
Through variations of hell.

And as you walk through the valleys of fear.
The lure of my bed is ever near.

Don't be afraid.
For the parade will not pass our way.
It's nobler to never get paid,
Then to bank on shit and dismay.

Don't be afraid.

 

By the way, this song was released in 2000 -- way way way before its time.  Just goes to show that artists are oftentimes the most valuable and least respected members of our society.  And you can see A Silver Mt. Zion this Thursday in Manhattan where they hopefully will be playing this song in solidarity with the Wall Street protesters.  I have a ticket and hope to be there, but I'm traveling for business and I don't know if I'll be back in time.  Yes, I'm completely selling out to the man.  And I could not be more unhappy about it.

 

In a Better World

This year's very deserving Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film is a Danish movie by director Susanne Bier who has crafted a complicated and unrelenting film that raises uneasy questions about the nature of violence in our society and the ways humans can and cannot cope with tragedy.  It is easily one of the best movies I've seen this year and it's available on DVD and Blu-Ray now.  Simply put, it's a better film than pretty much anything getting made in the United States these days and I highly recommend.

Hot Coffee

HBO premiered a documentary the other night titled Hot Coffee, which describes in detail the "tort reform" actions that have transformed American court systems in the past 20 years, orchestrated by GOP heavyweights like Karl Rove and the US Chamber of Commerce, resulting -- shockingly -- in an extremely tilted playing field toward corporations that have taken away a basic right of American citizens -- the 7th Amendment in the Bill of Rights -- the right to a jury trial in civil cases.  The movie takes its name and starts its examination with the somewhat infamous case of a woman suing McDonald's for getting burned by hot coffee, a case that ended up getting featured on an episode of Seinfeld (which appears in the film) and helped start a movement by major corporations (particularly the tobacco industry) to create fake citizen front groups, funded by these corporations, placing ads across the country to help convince the public that greedy sue-happy people were bankrupting our health care system and driving up consumer prices by bringing about "frivolous" lawsuits like the McDonald's case.  And as a result, the GOP used that a central plank of their platform for the past 20 years, passing so-called "tort reform" that limited damages in the Newt Gingrich house in the mid-90s (that Bill Clinton vetoed) and then, of course, electing a president in 2000 whose own consigliere was the one who started the movement while working for those very tobacco firms back in the late '80s.  And whose own state was at the forefront of a very successful state-by-state effort to enact tort reform that limits the amount juries can award -- an arbitrary limit set by legislators, not by judges or juries who actually hear the case.  And of course, the result hasn't been a decrease in medical costs nor lesser consumer prices for a cup of coffee at McDonald's.  Like everything enacted by the GOP -- or to be, honest, almost anyone in government this century -- the only result has been more corporate profits.  Shocking.  And the best part is... the woman in the McDonald's case deserved the damages she received.  McDonald's had 700 cases in the previous 7 years of coffee burning customers that they quietly settled for minimal sums without changing the edict that the coffee they sell be held at 180 degrees -- a temperature that when touching human skin for a few seconds will immediately cause 2nd and 3rd degree burns.  In gruesome pictures that I wish I hadn't seen, the film shows images of the 79-year-old plaintiff's severely scarred and burned legs that required skin grafts and nearly killed her.  The jury awarded $2.9M as punitive damages due to McDonald's longstanding disregard for changing a policy that had ruined this woman's life.  They said that number was chosen after a long deliberation because it was 2 days of coffee sales.  And that's the "egregious" runaway lawsuit case that started tort reform in the United States.  Perfect.