Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We've seen "Conspiracy Theory" quite a few times over the years.  It's a very funny movie, and Mel Gibson is at his best.  He and Julia Roberts make a good team, and Patrick Stewart as the bad guy is terrific.  I have a new consciousness about the state of mind of Gibson that I didn't possess when this came out in 1997.  So it's bittersweet to watch him clown around.  He's so good at it.  And maybe because he turned out to be "off" himself.  He's only 41 in this film, but you see the worry lines on his forehead, and his skin is aging fast, probably because of his manic energy and smoking and drinking.  But he still has those eyes and that lost boy persona that made him honey to girl bees.  Roberts is 29 in this film, so he seems a bit stale for her, but given the story line of her murdered father it fits that she would be attracted to a protector. 

There are so many funny lines just tossed hither and yon  that you can't catch them all, and your own laughing will cause you to have trouble hearing them, but what a hilarious script!  And the whole time you're thinking:  wait a minute, this could be true, as you listen.  Gibson is the master of this chatter.  And so many funny scenes, with the best being him tied to a wheelchair barreling down a staircase causing mayhem all the way to the bottom. 

We lost a star when Gibson self-destructed.  His mind was wired wrong, probably from his father, and yet for many years his talent shown bright despite his ideas, both as an actor and as a director.  He's brilliant, but dangerous.  Beautiful, but damaged.  In the end, I felt sadness for the turn in his life, but that was after he made me laugh so hard I almost burst a blood vessel.  Oh, Mel, we hardly knew you.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

"The Boys from Brazil" is a fun thriller.  From a book by Ira Levin, who also wrote "Rosemary's Baby", it has an even more plausible premise today:  Joseph Mengele, hiding in Paraguay, has cloned around a hundred Hitlers, sent the babies off to various countries to be raised in circumstances as Hitler was, and then later unleased upon the world.  Gregory Peck plays Mengele, James Mason is one of the Nazis in the plot, Laurence Olivier is the Nazi hunter no one supports, Lili Palmer is his sister, and Steve Gutenberg is a journalist hot on the trail. 

It's delightful to see the three old lions chewing up the scenery, and the kid who plays young Hitler is scary, Jeremy Black.  The pace is perfect, the tension is bundled between scenes with humor, and the film leaves you with a lot to think about:  nature versus nurture?  how much of our destiny is in our hands?  what if Hitler had lived with a different set of circumstances.

The movie is fun, and even zany, while being scary and bizarre.  There is a scene with Rottweilers that may make you stick to cats.  It's worth a look.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We watched "Terminator:Salvation" last night.  It was not a hit in theaters, and rightly so, as it is an attempt at a pre-sequel for greedy reasons only.  And yet, and yet...Last night, and no, I had nothing to drink, it struck me as interesting. The casting is good:  Christian Bale is the perfect choice for John Conner, and Sam Worthington as Marcus does have a look of Arnold.  Also, it is fun to see the machines from a different angle, and the film makes you curious about what has happened to Marcus.  And what has been done to him is left in suspense and not fully revealed until the end. 

The message is very Buddhist:  we are not our minds, but our heart/mind, and Marcus has retained his human heart, even though the bad guys have screwed around with the rest.  We can choose.  No matter how we are programed by culture or experience, we can choose.  Compassion is our salvation.  That has a nice ring to it for me.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

Last night I saw a movie I love that my husband dislikes, "Hereafter" directed by Clint Eastwood.  It is a strange film, and attempts to explore near death experiences.  There are three stories presented:  the first is Matt Damon living in San Francisco, a psychic who is tortured by his gift, the second is Cecile de France, a famous French TV personality who is caught in the tsunami in Indonesia, and the third story is of twin boys in London with a druggie mother more or less fending for themselves.  The first images of the film are powerful and strangely beautiful yet profoundly disturbing:  the ordinary moments before the tsunami and the rush of the water and the turbulence sweeping up de France's character as she is pulled under and buffeted around.  But Damon's character is being pulled under by despondency and lonliness, and the twin boys by their struggle to keep social services from taking them away from their mother, though she is patently unfit.  They have become "other" through their experiences.  Miraculously, they find each other.  The stories and amazing acting of these characters make us feel with them almost immediately, and there are twists and turns that surprise us and show some wit and test the strengths of these main people.

I find this film lovely and truthful, acknowledging the experiences we cannot rationalize, the affinities we cannot understand.  Eastwood was courageous in tackling this subject, and has done it with compassion, tenderness and good taste.  His guitar music is a lovely woven thread through the film, underlining the motif of fragility and strength.  There is a wisdom in this movie that is rare.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

A few nights ago we watched "Wait Until Dark" a sixties film with Audrey Hepburn.  She plays a recently blinded woman, married to Ephram Zimbalist Jr, a photographyer.  He is the unwitting recipient of a doll filled with heroin and the woman who asked him to hold it for her is murdered and her killers are after the doll. Richard Crenna, looking very young, is one of the two excops drawn into the scheme and Alan Arkin plays the psychopath who hires them.  They send the husband away on a wild goose chase in order to terrorize the wife, Hepburn, into giving them the doll, but it has disappeared and they don't believe her.  This was a play, but the claustrophobia is perfect in the basement flat, and most of the plot twists are clever and plausible.  Hepburn is excellent.  What I couldn't quite get over is her thinness; she is wearing clothes that have her looking skeleton like.  In other films this is better hidden.  I couldn't help but think of her and her mother as refugees in World War II, starving and desperate.  Sometimes Angelina Jolie looks emaciated as well, and to me at least, it is disturbing and hurts the story.

I think this film wears well, and the suspense is gripping and the only real flaw is Zimbalist's character, who is too paternal with his wife, and my last thought of the movie is she should definitely divorce him and find a more sensitive man. 

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

We saw "Noah" yesterday, after the recommendation of our son.  The film left us with lots to talk about, and caused my husband to read about various flood stories in history and even read the Bible.  As our son said, it's not perfectly done, but the ideas are interesting, and the acting excellent.  I thought the "watchers" were neat, though they resembled the rock guy in "Neverending Story", and the special effects were good.  The drama of a man who thinks he knows the will of God is, well, biblical and timeless.  The rifts within the family are engaging and realistic.  That Noah sees the inevitability of man destroying nature and each other again and still chooses hope is touching, and something each of us undergoes in our modern world.  The king's vision of man as conqueror and user of the world for his needs and pleasure is equally prevalent in our time.  They run Wall Street and most of everything else.

Russell Crowe is perfect for the role and Jennifer Connelly is fine as his wife for a second time (remember "Beautiful Mind")?  Emma Watson and the other kids are good, and Aronofsky makes you care about all of them.  I love some of the details surrounding the animals, and the scale of the Ark is perfect.  The watery effects are great.

I wish there had been more of the landing and we had seen the animals disembark.  There is something dimmished about the last part of the movie which makes it anticlimatic.

But the questions raised are as big as it gets and transcend cultures and times.  Are we stewards of the earth or lords?  Were we meant to eat our fellow creatures?  And what does it do to us if we choose to do so?  Is our nature more dark than light, or have we choice to turn from the dark to the light?  Will man bring about his own destruction yet again?  Something to ponder.

Pass the Popcorn: Movies from where I Sit

My hand is still in a cast, but in a couple of weeks I should be able to write in this blog regularly again.  Last night we watched Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", 1939, and it's patriotic and clear eyed at the same time.  Jimmy Stewart is a bit hysterical throughout, but then he does anxiety so well.  Jean Arthur is Saunders, his secretary when he comes to D.C. as a newly minted Senator, his perfect foil, so calm and pragmatic and depressed she's bound to fall for him and does.  Claude Rains is terrific as the senator Smith worships, and Harry Carey wonderful as the President of the senate.  Thomas Mitchell plays a reporter in love with Arthur and everyone does their bit to make the film vivid.

Seeing boy pages is fascinating.  Now they are twenty somethings the senators sleep with.  All the boy scout stuff is baloney, but fun, and the year this film was made shows in the reminders of what America stands for, versus the looming Europe of Hitler.  It's a great history lesson, vastly romanticized.  It sends my heart soaring, and I'm glad I will be visiting D.C. next month, as I've loved the city since childhood.  If you're in the mood, all the speechifying is inspiring, and you almost believe all over again that good can triumph over greed and corruption.  Almost.  Except for the Supreme Court, making money the only coin of the realm.