What I Am Watching: The Glades, Continuum, Ray Donovan

The Glades is a light, couple fare procedural. The premise, which was probably dispensed with by episode 3 of the first season, of a cop from Chicago forced to move after a scandal and a large legal settlement. He ends up in Florida where he can buy a cheap but snazzy house and spend his days playing golf, cuz y'know, what can happen in non-urban Florida?  Well, it wouldn't be a show unless the answer was A LOT !

Jim Longworth is the cantankerous cop with a knack for pissing people off -- asking too many and often offensive questions until he figures out the murder. And he is as often annoying his coworkers as he is the suspects. Because, well, everyone is a suspect until he knows otherwise. But on the other side, when he gets a crush on a local nurse, it is entirely sweet. His job is his job and he is actually a pretty decent guy.

I just like watching the way his relationship with Callie grows, as there is no aspect of "will they get together" as other shows do. By season 4, he and Callie are engaged. There have been some rough spots but the relationship is so sincere, its a joy watching it grow.  See what I mean? Couple fare.

The crime aspect is actually pretty milk toast but the fun is in how much of a tourism commercial for southern Florida the show is. We can ignore the product shots, but we get so much exposure to different areas, people and history of the area. Jim is ever the visitor and his coworkers are constantly educating him to the highlights of Florida life. Meanwhile he continues to grow his reputation as a spectacular cop which just gives him the needed leeway to act the ass, when investigating.

On the other end of the spectrum is a typical scifi Canadian production. Continuum is a time travel series, so of course I am watching. Kiera Cameron is a cop from 2077.  She is assigned, as we are reminded every episode in the opening voiceover, to the execution of a captured terrorist group. But something goes wrong (actually, quite as planned) and the cop & criminals are transported back to 2013 Vancouver. And yes, this is set in Vancouver not just random unnamed US city pretending to not be Vancouver.

The premise is very solid and straight forward -- Kiera has to stop the terrorists from manipulating our present day so their future agenda is played out, all the while trying to figure out how to get back home to her son and husband. She has to work her way into the Vancouver police force, using her magic technology to play the part of a secret American task force member, sent to Canada to assist with these terrorists that just appeared out of nowhere. And she has to build a relationship with a young techie, who happens to be the leading technologist of her age, albeit when he is much older.

There is little play on the typical concepts of time travel fiction. Its hinted at, as the goal of the terrorists is to play with their future, but we never focus on it to any minute degree, i.e. we are not playing with the butterfly effect where we see the dire consequences of any minute change. Kiera messes with history all the time not worrying too much how things will affect the future. And she never experiences any altered memories. Its kind of refreshing, not really having any of the consequences shown to us.  At least, not until the end of season two when an alternate group of time travellers appears with an agenda to protect the time stream. How? We have no clue until next season.

Finally, we have something I have only just started watching, Ray Donovan. Again, a simple premise, a Boston gangster transplanted to LA where he is a fixer for the stars. He deals with scandalous situations, stalkers and the like. He has an ex-boxer of a brother and another one who is a recovering addict. And thennnn there is his dad, a scuzbag of a criminal who just got out of jail and has come to LA to rebuild a relationship with his family. But there is a darker unrevealed connection there that has Ray hating the old man... utterly.

It's the cast that brought me to the show. Liev Schreiber is Ray, Eddie Marsan and Dash Mihok are his brothers. And Jon Voight is the scuzzy aging gangster dad. So scuzzy. I am not one attracted to shows with only reprehensible people but something about this will probably keep me coming back. The setting? Hollywood seedy is expected. The acting? Incredibly strong so far.  We shall have to see how it goes.

3 Short Paragraphs: After Earth

2013, M. Night Shyamalan -- cinema

Right out of the star port, I have to state I am a Shyamalan Apologist.  I have enjoyed, to some degree, every movie he has done, including The Last Airbender. I list Unbreakable in my ever changing, as they should always be, Top 10 Movies list. I even enjoyed The Happening despite the terrible acting by all involved. I don't subscribe to his described need to have "a twist" in every movie in order to stay popular. Alas, I have to admit that this movie is not very good.

Will and Jaden Smith are two soldiers in a distant future where mankind has abandoned the Earth. In a too-little-explained prologue, we learn humans left the earth a thousand years ago and settled another planet. But aliens arrived soon after and a war begins with the S'krell using big nasty monsters who sniff us out via our fear. I could go on for a few more paragraphs adding to this largely useless back story (layered but not explaining much) but suffice it to say that while Will and Jaden are transporting one of these alien beasties, their ship crash-lands on the abandoned but now rejuvenated Earth.

This is a beautifully shot movie, with grand Avatar style vistas and a keenly designed technology. But really, what isn't these days. Crash-landed Jaden has to get from point A to point B and recover a MacGuffin so he can call in the cavalry to rescue him and his dad. The movie is a journey of survival and self-enlightenment -- Jaden's Kitai feels he can never live up to his dad's legacy as General Cypher Raige. So, the story is just the two of them.... and the monster. Not only is Earth a dangerous place (ignore the whole "evolved to kill you" tag line) like any planet with predators would be, but the monster they were transporting is loose and wants to eat Kitai. You would think that in such a small story, we would have a focus and be drawn to the battle of wills between man and beast. But no, Kitai is whiney & annoying and Raige (*rolls eyes at lame name*) is just an absentee dick of a dad. Tell me how a video game (The Last of Us) with an anti-hero male lead and an annoying 14 year female lead can be more compelling and emotionally engaging than a massive budget movie by a gifted film maker? I was truly disappointed with this movie.

3 Short Paragraphs (We Agree): Much Ado About Nothing

2013, Joss Whedon (The Avengers) -- cinema

When I first heard the rumours that Joss was working on a Shakespeare adaptation, it just sounded right. Why was a modern representation of Shakespeare's popular comic play just so right in the Whedon-verse? I am not sure completely but it may be connected to Whedon's love of language and a good ability to mix pathos and comedy. But dispensing with the analyses, it just felt right. Strangely enough, Shakespeare is also a rather geeky concept, having just as many frothing fanboys as superheroes and Firefly.

Alas, I am not one of the Shakespeare geeks. I have never seen a play live, never been to Stratford and it always takes me at least ten minutes to catch the cadence. Yes, in the movies. I am a rather big fan of the Kenneth Branagh adaptation, it emerging right at the height of my Branagh fascination and my Kate Beckinsale crush. That one was set in period so I was really interested in seeing how they would place a story about a Prince and his soldiers returning from war, in contemporary times.  We are not given many details, but the two Dons, Pedro and John, are likely crime bosses and have come to friend Leonato's house to escape some drama in Los Angeles. And it is in this great house party that Claudio falls for Leonato's daughter Hero and Beatrice & Benedick are setup for a hookup.

We have much of the motley crew of the Whedon-verse, some from Buffy, some from Doll House and some from Firefly as well as a few fresh faces to round out the crew as they drink through the night and next day in the house that is actually Joss's. Almost everybody is spot-on with their characters but some are downright outstanding!!  Reed Diamond just falls into the role as if this was the way he speaks everyday... he just was his character. Franz Kranz dispenses with his usual dotty act and is splendid as the besotted Claudio. I wasn't as enamoured with Nathan Fillion as Dogberry, as the rest of the world seems to be and I was as equally cool with Alexis Denisof as Benedick -- he just didn't seem invested. But I must admit, if I don't hear with him with a soft british accent, he just seems off, even though I know that is not his background.  All in all, its a great little movie but a part of me wonders why I didn't find it astoundingly wonderful. I think I might have to ask a Shakespeare guru if there was something flat about the production.

3 Short Paragraphs: This is the End

2013, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg -- cinema

I was nervous about this movie for pretty much the same reasons as Graig was, with one additional nag -- while the crowd of "Apatow Kids" are good in their own right, often the people they surround themselves with (as actors and creators) are far away from the type of comedy I like. I like Rogen when he is reigned in, I like James Franco in his non-comedy roles, I tolerate Jonah Hill and I outright cannot stand Danny McBride. While I loved the premise and the trailers made me giggle, I worried it would quickly degrade into fart and dick jokes. It did but it also surprised me with some of the depth it had. So excuse me while I do a weighing the scales thing with my hands while making a whiney, "Ehhh uhhhh ehhhh," sound when asked if I liked it.

The premise is The End of the World. From the trailers, we couldn't tell if it was ecological or aliens or an asteroid or all of the above. But, no, its Biblical -- The Rapture. Yes, we are taking a bunch of narcissistic amoral comedians, playing extreme versions of themselves, and presenting them with Christian salvation or ... doom. The movie works around a surprising main plot of Jay Baruchel coming to see Seth in Hollywood, as Seth is the guy who moved there and Jay still lives in Canada. Jay doesn't like the Hollywood lifestyle or Seth's Hollywood friends and feels they are drifting. So, he is not fond of being dragged to the party at James Franco's new house. He is even less fond of being trapped in the house when things fall apart around them.

Its kind of funny but the characters are pretty much played as guys like me believe these actors to be. Franco wants everyone to love him but is a bit of a stoner dick, with delusions of how great his "art" is. Seth is losing the war between embracing Hollywood while maintaining his Canadian stable outlook. Jonah Hill is a conniving little weasel and Danny McBride is just an all around terrible person. Baruchel sees himself as the even tempered fair guy but how long can you maintain that with giant swing-dick demons walking the earth? I know very little about Craig Robinson so no comments. The movie was able to give humor in these exaggerations (which I was not always fond of) but maintained a decent plot of how these people deal with a Christian End of the World scenario. I laughed but I also rolled my eyes a lot.

Much Ado About Nothing

d. Joss Whedon, 2012 - in theatre

Since I met my wife, my Shakespeare IQ has gone up 500%, in that I knew next to nothing about Shakespeare 7 or 8 years ago and now I might know maybe 50 things.  I obviously got exposed to the Bard in high school, as most of us do, but it was only Romeo and Juliet and a half-assed attempt at King Lear that I truly witnessed.  Beyond that Julie Taymor's fantastic Titus and... hmm... Dune?  That was Shakespeare right?

Anyway, I've been to the Stratford Festival a half dozen times (the first time was technically the first date with my future wife to see Coriolanus, I believe, starring Colm Feore), and we've watched a couple of cinematic interpretations of Shakespeare since, a lot of them full-on modernizations, or that old chestnut of keeping the dialogue pure but re-contextualizing the setting. 

What we all know about Shakespeare is that olde-English he wrote in is quite difficult to penetrate without some level of study. Like any dialect one needs to attune their ear, but even still it's a challenge as some words come off as gibberish and others don't mean the same thing anymore.  What I've discovered is that it's the performers, not the setting or the props, but the individual actors who make all the difference.  It's up to these actors, whether on stage or on screen, to intellectually understand the material and be able to convey, both through physical presence and verbal inflection, the meaning of the words, when they really don't make sense otherwise.

When Joss Whedon -- beloved nerd demi-god and creator of the geek gospel such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, not to mention writer-director of Marvel's The Avengers --  brought together a group of his loyal acting familiars to his home to stage a production of Much Ado About Nothing over 12 days, there was a definite cry of "whaaaa?" from both geek circles and the theatre crowd.  It's not that anyone doubted that Whedon couldn't wrangle an ensemble (it's what he excels at afterall), but as far as anyone knew, his cast were all, at best, minor TV personalities with few or no major stage credits, and little sense that they would be credible in a, what seemed to be, tossed off Shakespeare production.

But there's a few things going for it, first that Much Ado is perhaps Shakespeare's most accessible story (maybe second only to Romeo and Juliet), secondly that it is a comedy and Whedon has a masterful sense of comedic timing, and thirdly that Whedon has an extensive and intimate familiarity with his cast.  With the latter, that sense of ease and trust and fun all appears on screen.  The cast seems to be having a great time, and they're given the freedom from intricate sets and extensive lighting preparation and makeup and all the usual filmmaking business to explore the words and the characters, investing well within them.  Whedon dispenses with any notion of a period piece, but also scales back the modern elements, allowing for a production liberated from the modern day without ignoring it completely.  The cast explores the grounds of a seemingly palatial estate (though likely smaller than it appears through expert blocking) but the setting never overtakes the performance.

The actors all, save one or two roles, deliver outstanding performances, most notably Amy Acker as Beatrice.  Acker was a prominent figure on Whedon's Buffy spin-off Angel and Dollhouse as well as a villain on CBS's Person of Interest, and she's always appealing to watch, but she commands the screen here and owns the picture.  It's an amazing performance that had me in awe of her ability, and wanting to see more of her as the lead in a production (while I'm happy her role on Person of Interest has been expanded to series regular, she really deserves her own show).  Likewise Fran Kranz is shockingly good, sloughing off his stoner/nervous tech geek ty
pecasting as Claudio and showing an incredible depth as the enamored, then wounded Claudio. 

If there's a weak spot, it's unfortunately in the counterpart to Acker's Beatrice, and that's Angel veteran Alexis Denisof's Benedick.  Of all the actors, Benedick has the most tricky lifting to do, and fumbles it the most often.  His uneven performance doesn't go so far as to ruin the production, and quite often he delivers a bravura physical performance, but of all the cast he has the most difficult time making the language flow naturally and meaningfully.  Even still, his physicality goes a long way (if perhaps too far sometimes) in making it an excellent comedy, but the true comedic heroes are actually the intended comic relief.  Whedon stalwarts Nathan Fillion and Tom Lenk as the bumbling security team oblivious to their own nature get exactly the desired effect they're supposed to and do so without any hint of irony.  A very Mel Brooks-esque gag is pulled with Fillion's tie appearing awkwardly different in every scene.

Shot in black and white, quickly, cheaply, and largely with hand-held cameras, it's a distinctive picture to get its widest release during summer blockbuster season.  To be honest, though, I enjoyed it more than almost any other major multi-hundred-million-dollar picture this year.  It's a warm, charming, and engaging production of, naturally, a timeless comedy.

3 Short Paragraphs: This Is The End

d. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, 2013 -- in theatre

I was nervous about This Is The End, nervous that it would be a film too "inside baseball" as they say, a film for the fans of the "Apatow Kids" from Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, 40-Year-Old Virgin onward.  I don't think Apatow has inspired the frothing fandom of a Kevin Smith, or even the more erudite geek fandom of Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg, and so I was worried that a film like this, which appeared to be banking on a general audience being fans of the actors, rather than their acting ability, would be a later-day Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, a movie solely reliant on in jokes and understanding fourth-wall-breaking references.  I don't know why I was so worried, after all, I genuinely loved the Rogen and Goldberg scripted Superbad, and Pineapple Express was a blast, so why shouldn't I have faith that they could pull another great comedy out?  *cough*Green Hornet*cough*.  Oh, right.

But it was a concern easily dismissed.  The film begins with Rogen picking his friend and fellow Canadian Jay Baruschel up from LAX for a solid week of catch up, and bonding over weed, snacks and video games.  Rogen drags a highly reluctant Baruschel along to a party at James Franco's new place, where Rogen's new, non-Canadian friends will be, friends whom Baruschel can't really tolerate.  During the party, the rapture happens (nobody at the party notices) and the apocalypse begins.  Chaos and mayhem and dead celebrities abound as the grounds open up and the sky rains fire.  It's all very Biblical, with a lot of blaspheming coming out of the actors mouths.  The party and the subsequent dissolving of the party is epic satire, with a clever bit of celebrity lampooning and piss-taking of Hollywood egos, but for all the hype it's remarkably short.  It's a judicious cutting, keeping the movie at a reasonable time, but I'm looking forward to DVD extras of all the deleted scenes that there must be nonetheless.

Left alive in Franco's fortified bunker of a home are Franco, Baruschel, Rogen, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson and Danny McBride.  The sextet, largely appearing as friends, are quite clearly realizing that "Hollywood friends" are not quite the same as real friends.  The film is about them relating to one another as people as much as it's about them surviving the apocalypse and the numerous dick and fart jokes that you can draw out of such a scenario (and it's a remarkable amount).  Rogen and Goldberg seem to (generally) excel at drafting these kind of male-bonding experiences and doing so in an entertaining way.  The film succeeds in establishing these men as people and not just relying on their celebrity status to do the heavy lifting, and it's effective in getting you to care for them. or at least their relationships with each other, even if you dislike them.  The film takes aspects of the primary actors and exaggerates them for its own comedic purpose  - such as Rogen's cowardice, Hill's duplicity, and McBride's selfishness - and gets a lot of mileage from it.  It's not necessarily against type for any of them, but it plays with what's expected and pushes them to extremes.  Ultimately, This Is The End succeeds because it's damn funny, it can be silly, honest, scary, gross, bizarre and touching all at once.  The "inside baseball" jokes are there, but it's not the focus of the characters, the story or the humour, it's just one small facet of a surprisingly robust apocalyptic comedy.

3 Short Paragraphs: Enemy Mine

d. Wolfgang Petersen, 1985 -- netflix


I had, for some time, considered Wolfgang Petersen to be an arty film director, one of those European types who could come onto a big American production and class up the place.  I remember when he was in discussion for a Batman/Superman movie earlier in this millennium, and I thought "Oh, he might be a decent choice."  But looking back on his IMDB profile, he's totally a Ridley Scott, he's an above average, populist movie maker.  He's not an auteur like an Aronofski or Anderson (Paul Thomas or Wes) with a distinctive, trustworthy voice.  He's just a guy who makes mid-to-high budgeted films with big name actors.  Looking at his work from the past while, Poseidon, Troy, The Perfect Storm, Air Force One, Outbreak and going back to the early 1980's not one of these films could be considered anything truly artistic.  I guess just having an exotic name and Das Boot under his belt (a notorious television mini-series set on a submarine which I remember fondly as "the non-English show with the dicks" [full frontal male nudity that is] that my dad watched and had recorded to videocassette when I was a kid.  I never watched it, because the tone of the piece unsettled me).

When I popped in Enemy Mine, and the opening title cards announced Petersen as director, I was hopeful that this would be more than a largely forgotten 80's sci-fi story.  None of my geek friends throughout the years have ever spoken fondly of this film, and really, outside of long-time curiosity, I've had nothing pushing me towards seeing it.  I have a soft spot for pre-CGI sci-fi, and was doubly hopeful for a unique 80's-style sci-fi experience... but the opening space dogfight sequence was absolutely dire.  Not only does it look worse than Star Wars -- which, really, very few films ever lived up to the craftsmanship of that series -- it looked worse than most sci-fi TV shows that preceded it.  How does a major motion picture in 1985 look worse than Battlestar Galactica or Buck Rogers from five years earlier?  The models looked like models, the starfield they were operating in front were terrible, the costumes (and performances) of the actors were not even laughably bad.  It's ridiculous how terrible it looked and there's no excuse for it in a post-Star Wars era.

The crux of the film finds an solitary Earthman and an enemy alien pilot both trapped on a desolate planet with environmental and native animal hazards.  They soon realize that they need to put their hatred towards one another aside and cooperate for protection.  An unlikely but undeniably strong domestic partnership forms.  The Dracs are hermaphrodites and the alien gives birth to a baby Drac but dies shortly thereafter leaving the human to raise the child on his own, taking his tolerance for Dracs to the next level of parental love, and protecting the child from the threat of slave mining.  Despite the terrible special effects, the clunkiness of the execution, and the always predictable nature of the story, there's a heart to the film which makes it watchable, but it never comes off as anything more than, say, an extra-length Outer Limits episode.  Both Louis Gossett Jr. and Denis Quaid commit to what their doing, and it saves the otherwise terrible production from being a direct-to-video, mostly unwatchable product.  I think if you make this with a bit more of a love story between the human and the masculine hermaphroditic Drac, it would be a far more interesting picture.

3 Short Paragraphs: World War Z

2013, Marc Forster (Stranger Than Fiction, Quantum of Solace) -- cinema

OK, let me get this out. This looks like a good movie -- its well shot, its built around skilled actors and performances and has exciting locales. You get the reminiscences of Contagion, obviously for the plague elements, but also the intrigue and suspense of military movies like Green Zone and The Hurt Locker. That it also smacks of The Bourne Identity is not surprising as that was the intention of the original screen writer, J Michael Straczynski. But the obvious meddling of producers and financiers in re-writing the script (it was not even finally accredited to JMS as anything other than story) is so heavy handed, I came out wondering what the point of the plot really was. After a while, I realized that half the production staff must have played the stellar zombie video game, Left 4 Dead, as they were almost rebuilding key scenes from that movie, minus the mutated creatures. Combine that with the plot holes you could enrage a tank through, I gave up trying to see the movie for what it was supposed to be and just settled in on it being badly, badly done. I could watch it for its decent crafting but that was it.

I also have to get out that I was not too bent out of shape that this was not going to be the book. The book is a series of remembrances, during interviews. They are over a vast swath of time and geography with countless characters. That is not a movie, but JMS at least attempted to capture the feel of the book, along with some key moving scenes, but hinged it around a character who would travel the world -- Brad Pitt's Gerry Lane. That was a good idea. But as production steamrolled on, all aspects of the book were dispensed with. There are the occasional reference, here and there, like those that pop up in mockbusters but nothing smacks of the original story. Sure, there are zombies and it is happening world wide, and that is about it.

The zombies themselves were impressive in a predatorial fashion, more like a hive mind of bestiality than zombies. Other than a few hints that it was difficult to put them down, we don't even really see them as the undead, more just infected people, like 28 Days Later. That is OK, but for the use of zombie and zeke in the movie. And PG-13 ?!?  Seriously?? All zombie attacks take place off camera or in the blurry distance?!?! The ant piles are fun to look at but lose their appeal, considering they were the main element of the trailers.

3 Short Paragraphs + A Couple More: Doomsday Book

2012, Pil-Sung Yim, Kim Jee-Woon -- Netflix

This is a trilogy of science fiction stories from Korea, well made and incredibly well told. All three stories involve the possibility of complete destruction of mankind, via familiar speculative fictions means: zombies, the emergence of robotic intelligence and alien intervention. Each story has a distinct style and tone that lend themselves well to the story being told.

The first is Brave New World, a zombie origin story that starts with rotting apple in a research scientist's home. We follow the apple through the compostable waste system all the way to its re-feeding to cows. We the viewers know a virus is travelling with it and back into the realm of human consumption. As an analogy for Adam & Eve in the brave new world, its kind of heavy handed but as a generic zombie ground-zero story, its brilliant. As we follow the main character, the inadvertent source of everything, we are bombarded with the news flashes and responses by the media to what is happening, in all its lunacy. There is a tinge of farce and comedy as Korea quickly dissolves into a zombie state. Is there hope when Eve gives Adam an apple? Who knows as the point of the metaphor is lost.

Next came Heavenly Creature, a 20 minutes into the future story where household robots are common. It's obviously inspired by the Alex Proyas I, Robot movie as well as real robotic inventions this last decade. A repair engineer is brought in to inspect a servant bot at a Buddhist Temple. The bot has basically become the Buddha, a state of perfect enlightenment. The engineer believes it to be a fault in the electronics but cannot find anything wrong, but still believes he should bring the thing back for repairs. His further investigation is stymied by the arrival of the founder of the company that manufactures the robots. He fears what will become of humanity should they accept the bot as Buddha and suddenly the engineer is set between his own company and this enlightened (but soulless?) creature.

The final story is lighter, if the end of the world can be lightened. A comet is streaking (they always streak don't they) towards the planet and there is little time left. Our family is stocking the bomb shelter hoping to live out the terrible times after the comet strikes. But when the scientists show, TV up to the last minute of course, that the comet has an eerie similarity to an 8-ball from billiards, the young daughter is stricken with fear. You see, not so long ago, in a fit of rage she destroyed her father's cherished 8-ball, as the family runs a billiards hall. In desperation she ordered it online, but by chance a UFO was passing over at the same time. So, the nice aliens are sending what she asked for, if a little too big for the table. And the order cannot be cancelled.

As all anthology movies should be, the stories entertain and leave you pondering a bit. Considering we spec fic fans are fed an endless supply of short films via YouTube, it was nice to see some of the short ideas expanded upon as proper movie elements.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Next Three Days

2010, Paul Haggis (Crash) -- Netflix

Is Russell Crow aging well? As a man or as a career? He is a few years older than me and while we live in completely different worlds, I still wonder and compare. He has not really been the purely heroic action hero but he has always played strong men, manly men. But he is hitting that age where he is more likely to play family men, unless he wants to be typecast as the grizzled veteran cop. He no longer has to check his body weight for the role. But he continues to work steadily, if not frequently, living as much in Australia and playing music (with Allan Doyle of Great Big Sea) as much as living in Hollywood and making movies. I think his next ten years are going to be much more interesting.

Paul Haggis is a Canadian screenwriter and director, known more for what he writes than what he directs. He's written everything from The Facts of Life (yes, the 80s show) to Walker, Texas Ranger (yes, the Chuck Norris series) to Casino Royale and Million Dollar Baby. Much of his life he was a Scientologist but he escaped the cult. He's received a lot of awards and nominations but I wouldn't really say he is a household name. This movie will probably be a footnote in his career, not being splashy or outstanding in any right, but you can see a skilled craftsman in its making. I have an urge to pay much more attention to him and his creations.

The movie has Crowe married to a woman convicted of murdering her boss. We are introduced to her as a volatile woman, of strong opinions. We can believe she did this but at no point does Crowe and he works tirelessly, while raising the kids and teaching, to free her via legal means. When the law fails, he has one option -- break her out of prison. The plan never goes smoothly for he is not a man familiar with the criminal element he require, and his wife is not sure she wants him to sacrifice everything. But Crowe is perfect here, relentless and quiet, determined and focused. Its heartwarming to see a man so utterly in love with his wife and family, convinced she can do no wrong. Unfortunately, everyone else is riding Crowe's coattails, giving mediocre performances best left for straight-to-<insert the current media>.

3 Short Paragraphs: Jack the Giant Slayer

2013, Bryan Singer (X-Men, Superman Returns) -- download

How do I change these "reviews" up? They never ended up what they started as, the premise of Graig and I arguing or disagreeing about movies or TV, in a back and forth single post nature. They evolved, into Graig doing proper long format reviews and I doing hackneyed attempts at summations. But really, if anything I did want each entry to be more blog post than true review of the movie. Thus, whenever possible I tend to bypass the staples that all "how to write reviews" demand, but they usually weave their way in. I don't know what purpose all this is supposed to serve, whether it is evolving into "proper writing" or not, but I continue. And occasionally the review is less about the movie than about me writing about the movie; like now.

But seriously, either I cut some movies out of the entire mix, which I loathe to do, or I am left saying only, "Well, I liked that one."  Sometimes that is all there is to say about a movie. "I enjoyed it." Often, the more frustrating a movie is, the more there is to say about it. I suppose that would apply to loving the movie as well, considering how much I went on about Pacfic Rim. So, I enjoyed Jack the Giant Slayer. The giants look great, the supporting cast (Stanley Tucci, Ewan MacGregor, Bill Nighy) are incredibly entertaining. The story is feasible and the mains are likable. It looks great. But that is all the passion I have to say about it.

What is it about? If you do not know the plot of the faery tale, basically Jack gets conned into taking beans instead of coin while selling the horse in town. The beans are magical and when they get planted, they grow into a great big ol beanstalk that reaches up high into the land of the giants. In this one, angsty leather hoodie wearing Nicholas Hoult (previous the zombie) has to go with the heroes into the giants' realm and rescue the princess. But Tucci the traitor leads the giants back and there is a rousing battle between the people and the CGI until Jack recovers the magic giant-controlling crown and wins the day. That's it. Its passable D&D-ish fantasy fare with some great acting and incredibly well done digital giants. Honestly, I would have been more intrigued if they had gone all CW and set it in modern times, lending more credence to Jack as the heroic hoodie-wearing rundown youth, with the giants attacking New York instead of fantasy England née Cloister.

Defiance

Defiance is both a SyFy Channel TV show and a massively multiplayer game. They were advertised as being tied together, in plot and character, and that each would influence the other. The plan is that each released game is to be a single season of the show, instead of the normal monthly cost or free-to-play model. I started downloading the show almost immediately but was not interested in the $60 ticket for the game, until it came down to $11 on a recent Steam Sale. And for the past few weeks I have been playing and comparing.

The show takes place in a near future after an alien invasion. Several races of aliens from  the same system all came to our world on great Ark Ships. At first they presented themselves as potential allies and were even given lands to settle, in South America. But racial tensions arose and led to the Pale Wars. While most of their people slept in the great Ark Ships, many fought against the humans for land. Suddenly the war is brought to a halt by the Arkfalls, as the ships in orbit exploded and began to crash to Earth. The Votans blamed the humans and the humans said Votan experiments went afoul. It didn't help that the crashing ships had vast terraforming technology that began to radically change the Earth. We are talking planet changing alterations -- new mountain ranges, collapsed areas and entirely new biospheres. The war continued a bit longer until both sides ran out of resources and a tense peace was established.

This is the post-apocalyptic world the game and show are set in. The show takes place in a mostly buried St. Louis while the game starts in San Francisco and the surrounding lands. The plot of the show follows Nolan and Irissa, two "Ark Hunters" (scavengers and treasure hunters who raid fallen ships) seeking their great windfall, so they can retire to tropical Antarctica. Their trip is interrupted when they get mixed up in the lives of the people of Defiance, once St. Louis. The town needs a lawkeeper (sheriff) and Nolan just needs to slow down for a bit. Irissa is his adopted daughter and of the Votan race Irathients. The game also has you as an Ark Hunter, but one working for a megacorp seeking a similar windfall from a fallen ship. Nolan and Irissa appear in the game and some of the plot lines cross over. And that is where it gets annoying.

The first thing that is incredibly annoying is the radical departures each has from the other. What little technology Defiance (the town) has is all backward but even the most remote and run-down zone in the San Fran zone has tons of high tech and alien toys. Everything in the game just looks more science fiction. It even starts off with a crashing Earth spaceship though we got the idea in the show that things were not much more advanced than now when the aliens arrived. When did we get the time to invent helicarriers?

Secondly, the story connection between show and game is tenuous at best. I don't mind that we meet Nolan and Irissa at the beginning of the game, but if that takes places before they run east to Defiance, it is fine. The trouble is we continue to bump into them when events are meaning to parallel events in the show. WTF ? Did they just pick up and drive west for a bit of plot and then run back home? It just makes no sense at all -- terribly sloppy story telling. It makes B-level TV look like Shakespeare.

The show is meant to be a bit of Firefly, with a frontier feel mixed with typical SyFy shows -- a multitude of characters, some obvious bad guys, weird aliens and convoluted but very basic plots. The acting is middling but the show is still decent; as usual, I will watch almost anything scifi on TV.  The world building is nicely done, giving us tons of interactions between the different races, with their cultures clashing and also trying to leave an amount behind, and just become Earthlings. It has some good post-apoc vistas and decent CGI. I still do not understand why it is so difficult to just do something not middling but good. Aforementioned Firefly is still the best scifi show in over ten years, with BSG a good runner up. But the rest are so afraid of standing out, they just churn out the same familiar feel show after show. Does mediocrity really breed ratings?

The game is also a terrible example of mediocrity, the typical example of what MMOs are these days in a world where it doesn't pay to charge and free-to-play makes the money but skimps on the design. The missions are so boring, I never read their text. Just rinse and repeat the concepts of either getting stuff or killing bad guys or both. Essentially all missions involve running (driving) somewhere and holding the E key a lot of times, to activate something, and then kill the spawning bad guys. And all the bad guys (no, they don't deserve capital letters) are so familiar and boring -- infected mutants, Road Warrior ripoffs, the big green (blue here) guys from Fallout 3, big bugs, etc. Its all terribly boring, but like Minecraft is sort of zen in its repetitive digging with pick-axes, there is something relaxing about shooting the constant spawns.

So, soon the game will finish the "story line" for me, probably reaching some sort of show season ender connection.  The show already ended the season; probably the reason the game was so cheap. If the game isn't just killed outright I will rinse-repeat my strategy next year -- maybe. But I will watch the show next season, if but for Irissa the wild girl.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Possession

2012, Ole Bornedal (Nightwatch) -- download

Originally called Dibbuk Box this movie is a respectable example of a possession movie, but twists the spine by being a Jewish demon instead of a Christian one. Considering they are supposed to be sourced from the same god, you would not think demons would care which worshippers believed in them. A dibbuk box is actually not an old Jewish legend but something quite recent, a "wine box" being sold on Ebay and garnering a legend for being haunted by an evil spirit, a dibbuk. I cannot find any information about what a wine box is but that could just be the internet not being interested in non-urban legend material. But still, the movie just has to bill itself as a "true story".

In The Possession a young girl buys a creepy old box from a guy at a garage sale and proceeds to get weirder and weirder the longer she owns it. Her divorced dad, the typical jerk of a dad somewhat oblivious to the needs of his daughters has purchased a big empty suburban house because the girls cannot continue to stay with him in a ratty apartment. But quickly on he realizes his daughter has an unhealthy attachment to the box and brings it to a Jewish scholar to translate the characters. Throwing caution to the wind, he tries to separate her from the box and ends up eliciting the help of a group of Orthodox Jews from "the city", including the rapper Matisyahu.

What raises this a step above all the other possession movies is the well hinged characterization in play. We believe in the characters. When Jeffrey Dean Morgan throws himself into the belief that his daughter is being influenced by a nasty spirit, we believe he will do anything to help her. Even during the Exorcist scene of blowing winds and people shouting at the demonic force, his caring is palpable.  I admit, I kept on grinning and wondering when Sam and Dean would show up (he played the father on the monster hunter TV show, Supernatural) he was still pretty damn good here.

What I Am Watching: True Blood, Luther, Under the Dome

SPOILERS.  You are warned.

Yes, we are still watching True Blood long after having given up on it. Why? Because of the train wreck appeal (forgive me that phrase considering the news of late) the show currently has, as if they were writing the show to elicit outrageous, over the top internet reactions and spawn terribly funny recaps. Consider what is going on this season. Werewolf Alcide, when not selling ice cream, is now full-on angry wolf leading his pack and being an asshole, Sookie the Half-Faerie is still fucking anybody who comes around the corner, this time being Ben, the Faerie-Vampire who happens to be the oldest vampire on earth and the alluded Big Bad of last season Warlow. Meanwhile Vampire Bill drank Lilith's blood (yeah, that Lilith) and has become some sort of uber-vamp. Meanwhile the Governor of Louisiana is on a rampage, tossing vamps into concentration camps, where they have them concentrate on fucking and killing each other. Meanwhile Terry, the damaged war veteran, got himself murdered and the 4 faerie daughters of Sherrif Andy got themselves eaten by Jessica, after having grown to teenager age in a few episodes. Annnd breathe.

Those are just the story lines I care to talk about. Its all a chaotic mess of intersecting plots with no attempt at order. Internet ready taglines and common phrases, ready to be shouted at the screen, are the norm for this season. They pick up and drop story lines sometimes in less than an episode. "Its the merkin queens !!" when Lilith and her ghostly, always nude, entourage shows up. "Faerie vaginas glow when they are aroused ?!?!" But will I stop watching? Nope. LaLa still rocks.

Ending its three series / season run this year is Luther. The show stars Idris Elba, the coolest guy on big and small screens these days, as a cop working the serious & serial crimes division. We were introduced to him as a man of extremes, letting some criminals die instead of bringing them to justice, and just not dealing well with his breakup. But a series of unfortunate deaths and a cat & mouse game with a sociopathic suspect tempers him as the show progresses. At first he is all about anger, and he scares those around him, but he is always a skilled investigator, if a bit unorthodox.

This unorthodox but always productive nature is what almost brings everything down around him. He is finally getting over the death of his wife, at the hands of his best friend & partner, and is dating Mary. But a previous colleague, at odds with his brusk attitude and that unorthodox behaviour is working her own investigation, trying to pin all the world's woes on him. She does have a point though, as numerous people have died in his presence, from suspects to friends.

Elba is incredible as John Luther. We all know he is a big man, but in this series he looms over all the supporting cast, even as he constantly slouches under his tweed coat. I want to describe how compelling his character is as an investigator, instinctive and resourceful, but its not about being all Sherlockian, its about the nature of his approach that is appealing -- that and the equally compelling villains. The whole show started with Alice, the sociopath in love with Luther (if she can even feel love) and there was the dice rolling twins, obsessed with playing a real life RPG, killing people to earn experience points. This season the killers are secondary to his own investigation, but the lynch pin remains a vigilante who is killing those who escaped justice and presenting it to the world via the Internet. Luther should be his peer, so everyone thinks, but this is an evolved man who understands the murderous crusader has to stop.

On the lighter side, I am compelled to watch Under the Dome but really, I should have listened to my burbling gut. Anytime Stephen King highly recommends a screen adaptation of his story, we are in for trouble. He just loves the TV and film production process so much, he never seems to notice how much crap has been produced from his work.

In the book King takes a small specfic premise, of a town that is suddenly trapped under an invisible dome (no not perfectly half sphere) with no explanation, and expands it into a Lord of the Flies analogy. What makes the book so good are the characters, who are often brought into the show in name only. So much has changed, I don't find any characters interesting or sympathetic. As expected, acting is middling and since they wanted to extend this into a full blown series, not even a short-life mini-series, they are stretching plot ideas very very thinly into episodes. I am still watching but I am not sure for how long.

3 Short Paragraphs: Haywire

d. Steven Soderberg, 2011

I would definitely site Stephen Soderbergh as one of my favourite film directors, but as I look through his repertoire, I notice that I've not watched one of his films since 2009's The Informant, and before that, 2006's the Good German.  I'm woefully derelict in my fandom.  I've missed some big pieces: Che, Contagion, and Magic Mike, not to forget the recent HBO Liberace biopic Behind the Candleabra.  Given these rather prominent features, Haywire seems like a minor work, one of his of-a-whim productions that combines the impetus for The Girlfriend Experience with the somewhat murderous mood of The Limey, but it's doubtless a Soderberg piece.

The director took inspiration after seeing MMA champion fighter Gina Carano rise in the sport, noticing both her ferocity and attractiveness, and decided to frame an espionage-based film around her.  Carano's character, Mallory Kane, is an ex-special forces agent working for a black ops contractor, but finds herself betrayed by her employer, set-up for a politically sensitive kill, and targeted herself for termination.  Joining Carano on the peripherals is an incredible supporting cast in Ewen McGregor, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton and Channing Tatum, all in small but pivotal roles.

The story is fairly straightforward but assembled in a jumbled fashion so as to add a bit more intrigue and allow some of the reveals to unfold in a less conventional manner, but it's really a story constructed to showcase Carano, looking both deadly and stylish, and moreover highlighting her formidable fighting prowess.  The sequences are expertly framed to show their movement and physical punishment, a stark and intentional contrast to the quick cutting of Greengrass' Bourne movies, and they're choreographed in a logical manner to imply that for someone of Mallory Kane's size to take on men with 20 to 60 pounds on her, not to mention added reach and height, she has to work quite a bit harder and take a few more lumps to come out on top.  Carano's acting is certainly serviceable, better than anticipated, even, while the film makes a concerted effort to minimize her necessary lines, she physically handles the focused screentime with ease.  She has a definite presence and charm, but time will tell whether she becomes a major action movie presence or b-movie, direct-to-on-demand star.

3 Short Paragraphs: Pacific Rim

2013, Guillermo del Toro (Mimic, Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth) -- cinema

Squeeee!!  OK, this is not one of the requisite paragraphs but I had to get that out.

Yesterday I saw it as I had hoped to see it, in AVX with good sound and a great big screen. But not 3D; I am not a fan of 3D and really, it makes me uncomfortable after about 20 minutes as the signals get scrambled going into my damaged eye, i.e. kaiju sized headache. But finally, after some false starts and reschedules and misprinted times and another weight that kept on interfering with my excitement, I got to see it.

Squeeee!!  Yes, there it is, I was extremely excited to see this movie, like a 14 year old on his way to see the big blockbuster based on his bestest, most favouritest cartoon. But am I really that kid? I was never really a Godzilla fan, being cheezed out by the rubber suits and thin plots. I often felt I was the generation after the proper fans, sort of like kids of today roll their eyes at Star Wars. But the idea of giant monsters tromping about smashing things, fighting other monsters and making a nuisance of themselves, well, THAT always interested me. From anime to remakes to Cloverfield, I enjoyed the spawn of the original kaiju flicks. I was probably one of the few who enjoyed the terrible American Godzilla and yes, I do own Cloverfield.  So, it is not surprising this movie is the singular bigsillygrin movie of my summer watching.

Did I enjoy it? Was I disappointed? Was it what I expected? Yes! No! Pretty much! More!!

OK, this movie won't be for everyone. But, really, you should give it a chance! Summer blockbusters should be about over the top heroics, big sounds and bright colours. If you are already going to give The Wolverine a chance, considering how lame the first was, you are ripe to come into this one and have a great time. This is well paced, exciting and engaging giving you characters to cheer for despite the limited (character) development and almost non-stop focus on the action. Del Toro does have a knack for the well rounded movie, something I feel is lacking in most blockbusters these days.

OK, so what is it about, in case you have not seen the trailers and over-hype? Simply, it's about a world not long from now, where a dimensional rift forms in the Pacific Ocean releasing big monsters (called kaiju in Japan) that wreak havoc on the coastal cities. We are able to fight them with conventional means but the cost is too high and it just takes too much time tossing planes, tanks and bombs at them. Something new was needed. The Jaegers (hunter in German) are created -- giant humanoid robots piloted by two people linked through a neural bridge; a single human brain could not withstand the scale. The Jaegers are successful but costly (collateral damage and building) and as kaiju get bigger and nastier, funds are shifted to building a wall. The Jaeger Program is being mothballed.

This is the world we are dropped into. The attacks are currently only on coastal cities but are escalating and its only a matter of time before they overrun the defenders and make their way inland. But something else is going on, something more dire. And that is the plot of this movie, apart from the world it has established. The Jaegers have one last chance to do their part in saving the world before all the money goes into building walls that people will hide behind.

OK, by now you have realized I am not getting away in only three paragraphs.

This movie has the classic elements of a hero story -- the damaged veteran scarred by his past, the incredibly skilled recruit who has to prove herself, the aging leader filled with wisdom but a sense of mortality, his own and the world's.  Sure, these are all melodramatically presented, occasionally cheesy and over the top, but it just works here. Charlie Hunnam is surprisingly not channeling his biker anti-hero from Sons of Anarchy but playing a fresh, truly heroic character haunted by his past.  Idris Elba's Stacker Pentecost is already bigger than life, based on his roles in The Wire and Luther, but here he sits upon the Jaeger Program throne with a heavy crown and an unyielding agenda. Charlie Day (Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Burn Gorman (Torchwood) are the comic relief, dueling scientists each with an idea of how to finally defeat the monsters. Rinko Kikuchi is Mako, Pentecost's adopted daughter and the perfect Jaeger pilot, despite her sensei's misgivings.

And this movie just looks good. From the soaring heights of the wall being built in Anchorage to the grungy, wet decks of the Shatterdome in Hong Kong, I was taken by a tingle of a thrill for the practical effects del Toro used. Think of a key scene in Avatar when Jake Sully leaves the shuttle and rolls across the tarmac of the base -- its all CGI, the background, even most of the movement and characters in the background. When we see Raleigh leave the helicopter, upon arriving at the Shatterdome, there is a sense of tangibility to everything he passes -- dirt, oil, wear & tear. Sure, Hong Kong in the background is digital but there is so much he has to pass that is real. And that is just one example of the sweet sweet use of practical effects, with the interior of the Jaeger heads sitting on the mountain peak -- everything in there is tangible and interactive. Incredible!

And the battles? Wow. The sense of weight and speed and destruction is incredible. We saw Superman bash through buildings in Man of Steel with a sense of dread at the collateral damage that was intense. But here, we don't suffer that, perhaps because the buildings stand mostly unoccupied, citizens evacuated to shelters, but more its because the world is on its last legs and the heroes must defeat the creatures despite the cost. So, shiny beautifully lit Hong Kong gets quite a wallop as Gipsy Danger has a knock-out brawl with the kaiju.

I am sure this movie had its flaws, but to be honest, I am not finding them yet. Most of what people would complain about -- cheesiness, melodrama, pseudo-science worked completely for me.  Completely.  Time to see it again.

Monsters University

d. Dan Scanlon, 2013 - in theatre

I didn't become a Pixar fan, really and truly, until I had kids in my life.  I enjoyed some Pixar movies, but thought they were a little juvenile for my sophisticated Tarantino-saturated tastes.  The Toy Story films particularly tweaked my interest as a late-teen and 20-something (then still an avid action figure an toy collector) while some time later WALL-E and Ratatouille came along, showing me that Pixar were capable creators of instant story-driven (less merchandise-driven) classics.  But I had glossed over a few of their features, Monsters Inc. being the first, mainly because of my snobby hipster attitude about Billy Crystal.

Shortly after turning two years old my daughter watched Monsters Inc. for the first time, and I'm not even sure if I had seen it prior to that event.  I was nervous that she would find it frightening in parts, but (as I later discovered) she loves being scared, and she loves Monsters Inc.  I too came to appreciate the film immensely upon a second or third viewing, (while she's watched the film about three dozen times, if not more) and when I caught wind of the new Monsters University, her excitement was palpable (about 15 months of "when's new Monsters Inc. coming?").  I, on the other hand, was kind of disappointed with their next feature being yet another franchise-expander (sequel or prequel), the third in four years.  While Toy Story 3 was a surprisingly beautiful swan song for that series, Cars 2 was a merchandise cash grab (by all accounts, I couldn't even bring myself to see it) and last year's Brave was a massive let-down.   Monsters University has a lot to live up to, particularly when the previous film's most beloved character (the human intruder Boo) obviously doesn't make the transition back in time, so while I remained hopeful, expectations were kept pretty low.  It met my expectations.

Monsters University is not a bad film, but it is a lesser entry in the Pixar portfolio.  It's a child-friendly take on 1980's frat comedies, a genre of film that relied heavily on nudity, sex, swearing and drugs to scandalize the old folks and draw a young crowd.  Obviously a Pixar movie can't have any of that (but what a bizarre thing that would be if they did) so what's presented instead is a chaste emulation of Animal House and any of the dozens of frat and camp movies (Ski School, Up the Creek, Meatballs etc.) where the crux of the film is one group squaring off against one or more other groups in a series of challenges.  It's actually kind of clever, since it's a formula that's been generally absent from the screens (or more likely direct-to-video) since the '90's, as a result it captures a nostalgia in parents of the kids in attendance, and at the same time presents to the kids a well-tested and appealing formula which they've not seen before (giving pre-teens and grade-schoolers a goofy and unreal look at their improbable future scholastic life).

Of course, beyond the nostalgia, it is a tired, tired formula, that isn't really given much new life in the way other Pixar films reconstruct genres.  Instead Monsters University tries to distract us from formula with charming characters (their specialty) and a hate-to-love bromance between beloved characters Mike and Sully.  Really they could have done anything for a Monsters Inc. sequel or prequel and as long as it contained Billy Crystal and John Goodman doing their thing, they would succeed.  These are two characters who just click with each other, instantly taking the view to a place of warmth, even when they're fighting on screen.  It's especially that reason, knowing that they become BFFs later on, that the audience invests in them so hard to stop fighting and support one another.

It's slight, sure, but it's got a lot of charm.  With voice talent from Charlie Day, Nathan Fillion, Joel Murray, Sean Hayes, Dave Foley, Helen Mirren, Steve Buscemi and more, there's just a lot of pleasantry going about, even from the characters who are less than pleasant.  It's bright, colourful, inoffensive, and just damn likeable, if not in any way surprising, or innovative the way we would like Pixar to be.  It'll be going on the shelf, it'll be watched dozens of times, but it's a lesser-than, which I guess is better than an also-ran.

3 Short Paragraphs: Warm Bodies

2013, Jonathan Levine (50/50) -- download

I don't understand the need to do the "alternate" zombie movie. Sure, I get the idea that they are pretty much played out as a genre monster, despite there not being a large number of actually reputable movies. But with The Walking Dead continuing to do well, there are shiny suited execs out there demanding scripts of a different sort, zomething that will keep the audiences coming in. So, why not "zombie love story" ? Umm, perhaps because it is necrophilia??!?!? Whatever; take some pretty young people, one dead, one not, and see where it can go.

Don't get me wrong, this is a fun little movie. I like the fact that Nicholas Hoult is the kid trapped inside the dead body -- yes, dead; these guys are grey skinned, no-beating-heart walking corpses that, for some reason or another, are not rotting away. Most of the time they wander around more like people with a bad hangover, going slowly about the lives they once had, vague thoughts going on in their heads about what they once were and what they are now. Yep, we have the narrator from somewhere deep in the zombie brain. Speaking of brains, when humans come near the zombies, their noses start a'twitching and they NEED TO EAT. If they eat brains, they get euphoric from the memories of the person they ate. Some nice world building, if a bit silly. The story gets going when Nick eats the boyfriend's brain and gets a lil dead guy crush on the cute girl, all drawn from the memories of a sweet romance.

Trapped inside a wall around The City, which happens to be Montreal to anyone with a sense of skylines, the humans are living out their last days. Not only are there slow shambling walking corpses but there are the Bonies, further decayed, maddened creatures without any semblance of what they once were. How they are faster, tougher and meaner after having eaten most of their own flesh and muscle is beyond me. But that is zombie movie science, along with the Love Gets the Heart Beating Again premise of the whole movie. So, what? The heart beats again which would push decayed sludgy blood into an animated corpse -- one would think whatever forces kept the guy from decaying would suddenly kick in and he would slip into a coma and quick death. But that wouldn't make for much of a (not icky-kinky) love story would it? No, instead they are "cured" by love and everything gets better as the RomCom Virus spreads from zombie to zombie.

3 Short Paragraphs: Spring Breakers

2012, Harmony Korine (Gummo, writer Kids) -- download

Harmony Korine is a highly lauded indie director and writer, most known for his writing of the skaters meet AIDS movie Kids. The followup cult movie Gummo was equally panned and raved about by critics for being idiosyncratic and / or indecipherable. Trash Humpers was at the TIFF, and yeah, that is enough said about it. He is the kind of art-trash indie director that your hipster film school ex-boyfriend goes on and on about when he is stoned. Think Gregg Araki for this generation. But me? I don't know, this was the first movie of his I have seen. I read some good reviews, but I admit, part of the reason I wanted to see it was dirty old man voyeurism. What? Shoot me.

So yeah, this is really a movie about the current generation of sex fueled wild teenagers, the kids who grew up exposing themselves in digital cameras or smart phone selfies and non-stop 24 hour free internet porn. Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine (yes, his wife) are four post-high school girls in Kentucky -- the bored bad girls smoking, drinking and doing cocaine. OK, Selena is the good little Christian girl but these are her BFFs. They want to do Spring Break on Florida but barely have enough for the bus ride. So, three of them rob the local diner armed with hammers, squirt guns and gangsta rap inspired foul mouths. And off they go.

This is the post-Girls Gone Wild world where kids trash the cheap Florida hotels doing drinks, drugs and sex to excess. We are presented with over-saturated montages filled with beer bongs, boobs and big booties all the while listening to Selena's good girl dialogue about how they are here to find themselves. This is what makes a 20 year old desperate to go there for Spring Break and a 40 year old wonder why his youth missed all that, for better or worse. OK, mostly for worse -- these kids would make my parenting peers hide their daughters away forever. Things actually only get worse for the girls when the police raid a party and the creepy, ever fascinating Alien (James Franco) shows up to bail them out. Presented with real bad behaviour (guns, violence, etc.) some of them fall into it naturally and some of them realize the spring fantasy really cannot last forever. And Alien? Alien realizes life is not Grand Theft Auto. Is it a good movie? No. Is it fascinating? Yes, oh yes, and I am sure that is all Korine committed to.

Another Earth

d. Mike Cahill, 2011 - Netflix

If I were to be perfectly honest about my favourite kind of movie, it might be discovery documentaries (the sort that reveal a world, or a personality, or environment I wasn't previously too familiar with) but would probably low-budget, dramatic science fiction.  Oh, I do love blockbusters and big budget action and askew comedies, those are the films I obsess over and watch again and again.  But it's stories like Another Earth that resonate far more within me, that are far more enriching, as they tend to explore the human experience of fantastical situations rather than just visually bringing a fantasy to life.  It's just that films of this sort, ones that are emotionally complex, are a lot harder to revisit, but seed enough conceptual elements that stimulate a whole different geek sector of the brain, rathe than just the empathetic, emotional ones.

Another Earth follows the story of Rhoda Williams (in a wonderfully understated performance from Brit Marling), a once promising MIT student who faces life after parole, having emerged from multiple years in jail after killing a woman and her child while driving drunk.  The night of the accident, and the cause of Rhoda's distraction, was the sudden appearance in the night sky of another Earth.  As Rhoda readjusts to civilian life, living with her parents, working as a janitor at her old high school and otherwise keeping to herself, her guilt overwhelms her frequently.  She decides she needs to face the man whose family she killed, and finds John Burroughs suffering physically and mentally from the aftereffects of the accident.  His home is in shambles, and his pain evident on his face, not just from the many pills he takes.

On his doorstep, Rhoda can't face her guilt, and standing in her janitorial coveralls, lies to John, offering him a free cleaning consultation.  This small lie brings Rhoda into John's life as his house cleaner, and naturally the chemistry between these two lonely people is close to unbearably awkward, but writer/director Mark Cahill never takes it to unwatchable extremes and constantly finds the humanity in the situation.  But, this isn't a feel-good romance/redemption story.  Though Rhoda never outright lies to John, her withholding the truth is just as severe.  It's a fascinating journey, as Rhoda brings John back to life and vitality, a small consolation for having destroyed it years before.  The emotions of her relationship with John are never anything less than complex, and in Marling's performance, Rhoda is never not aware of the damning truth.

In the background to all this is the other Earth, another place where, perhaps things were different.  There's a discovery of this other planet through excerpts of television news specials or radio reports  (some of the most naturalistic news coverage I've seen in a film) that gives a slow trickle of information about what it may be and the possibilities it contains, but at the same time, there's little true knowledge gleaned about it.  This sets up Rhoda's B-story, that of the contest, set up by an eccentric, Richard Branson-esque billionaire, to be the only civilian member of a privately-funded journey to the other Earth, which, obviously (yet believably) Rhoda wins.  The contest provides Rhoda the option of escape, of leaving her tortured existence behind, but it also gives her the ability to retain a little distance John, giving her an excuse to engage him, to even love him, knowing that she will be leaving.

The physics of the other Earth are obviously impossible (as the pull on the planets' mutual gravity would be devastating and they wouldn't be able to share the same solar orbit either, certainly leading to drastic differences in climate and solar radiation) but the conceit exists not as a scientific exploration, but an emotional one.  In that regard it retains a believability that could otherwise sink the film.

The ending to Another Earth left me with a bounty of questions and a certainly level of both admiration and frustration.  It's one of those "what does that mean?" conclusions that has a half-dozen or more possible explanations.  From my own perspective, I think it would have been better served with a 2-minute (ish) news montage reporting from the ground the journey of the shuttle to the other Earth, while still leaving questions open and the ending ambiguous (just a little less ambiguous and slightly more enriching in exploring its conceit).  I'll detail my thoughts in the comments on how this could have played out, so as no spoilers up here.

Searching for Sugar Man

d. Malik Bendjelloul, 2012 - Netflix

The "unknown musicians getting their due" is fast developing into a familiar, if not quite yet formulaic, subgenre of documentary.  It's a subgenre that has legs, however, as there's a lot of great music that goes unnoticed.  Today those overlooked gems are a result of the sheer glut of music being released, itself resulting from the ease of access to both recording and distribution resources.  Prior to the "digital age" -- which was only a dozen years back but feels like an eternity ago -- the channels for production and distribution were further out of reach (at the very least, far more costly) to the average hungry troubadour.  Step even further back to the 1960's and 70's, where there wasn't really even any independent distribution system, where the major labels and radio industry controlled what got released and what music was heard, and if you weren't producing hits, you weren't anything.

Such was the case with Sixto Rodriguez, an urban folk singer from Detroit who wowed producers at random live appearances around town in the late-60's and quickly found himself with a recording contract.  Unfortunately, after two widely ignored records failed to gain any domestic traction, Rodriguez disappeared into civilian life, unaware that he had reached infamy in South Africa.  What the distribution model at the time always failed to take into account was bootlegging, and from one or two copies of the records, hundreds of thousands, eventually millions of South Africans found a voice that echoed their disenfranchisement.

This documentary starts in Cape Town, with a music aficionado discussing his unending fascination with this cult figure Rodriguez, who, despite being easily in the top 3 of the all-time favourite/famous recording artists in South Africa, remained an utterly mysterious and unknown figure.  With no press material, no documented interviews, no magazine articles of any importance, Rodriguez's legend grew, as did the myths surrounding his death.  Director Malik Bendjelloul takes us through a journey of discovery, to Detroit to explore the history of this otherwise unknown folk music hero, and how he came to be such a critical figure in South Africa's musical landscape.

If you've heard anything about the Oscar-winning film, or watched the awards ceremony last year, then you've already had the film's great surprise spoiled; the revelation that Rodriguez is still alive in Detroit, living a pauper's life, having lived the life of a local activist while raising his children, working construction and verging on destitution, all while somewhere in South Africa, someone has made millions off the hundreds of thousands of records and CD recordings sold.  It's a twist that, even if spoiled, does not diminish the impact of the story.  Rodriguez seems a quiet, largely solitary man, humble and grateful for the life he's led.  His music is raw and forthright, and he seems to have continued to live the life he sang about 40 years ago.  His producers from long ago were heartbroken by his lack of success in America, and wonder, at least on camera, why he didn't hit the same heights as Dylan.  The simple answer being he clouded nothing in his songs, there was no shielding his message in metaphors.  His music was an exposed nerve that could have easily connected with the social movements of the time, but there was no way, in that era, that music that primal was going to achieve airplay.  But in the context of South Africa, Rodriguez is sandwiched between the Beatles and Rolling Stones as one of the all time greats, and the film's exploration of his overseas infamy, moreover his reaction to it, is what makes it remarkable and rewarding.

It's a beautiful documentary that earned all its hype, and lives up to it.