Review of the novel The Children of Men by P. D. James

An elegant and subtly-rendered portrait of humans clinging to the end of civilization. The Children of Men puts its readers in a greatly realized time and place soaked with violence, disillusion and dread. A novel that posits the notion that the end of days may bring about the worst in most but can also inspire the good in a few. This story was also the inspiration for the, in my opinion, superior film version Children of Men by director Alfonso Cuaron. The review of that movie is pending posting on this blog.

Review of the film The Secret World of Arrietty

            It takes so much to be brave in this world—to realize who and what is worth fighting for—especially when one is young. You haven't survived a lot yet. You aren't sure how to go about navigating those situations where courage is all you have. You're small and inexperienced and look to the adults for guidance.

            But what happens when the adults can't offer any guidance? What do you lay yourself on the line for? How do you do it? What if it's only you who is there to be brave and fight for what is truly important? How do you know what to do?

            The wonderful animated film The Secret World of Arrietty may not answer those questions for every child in this world, but it does answer them for its spunky 13-year-old heroine. Arrietty is a borrower; one of a dwindling race of tiny people who live in the shadowed folds and crevasses under our homes. As is their custom and need, they borrow small amounts of our goods, too little to even notice most of the time—a single tissue, a short piece of tape, a solitary sugar cube—to furnish their lives. They live quietly and happily just beneath the floorboards in homes that mirror our own in the most minute detail. These borrowers avoid us bigger humans, or “Beans,” at all costs for lack of trust for what we would do if we discovered their existence. What would happen to Arrietty and her sweet and nervous parents if someone did discover them...even if that person wanted nothing more than to befriend them? What if that person were a child, a lonely and sad child, inexperienced with secrets and caution and bravery?

            The story of the films winds through this premise beautifully and with a nuance that most animated movies lack. It's gorgeous to look at, luscious and so well crafted by the legendary Studio Ghibli that also turned out other cinematic wonders like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Arrietty and her parents, despite their obvious fictitious-animated nature, feel like real people with real desires and courage. Their story snares you with its adventurous and lived in feelings of true human behavior. And its story reflects something back at viewers that they may have glimpsed in themselves at moments throughout their lives.

            

Review of the film Take Shelter

            There are an infinite number of ways for devastation to strike. We are bombarded with the ideas and images of them from all angles—books, movies, television and print news—and it becomes difficult to discern what is true and what is made up in others' imaginations. The line between the two is so often unclear. When the question of what is real and what is imagined becomes blurred in one single mind, then that person and those around him begin to question his sanity.

            In Take Shelter, Michael Shannon plays a young family man, Curtis, who questions the visions of devastation that plague his nights. He dreams of a catastrophic and toxic storm that provokes insidious behavior in people and animals. Behind his small Ohio ranch house, he begins to build out and heavily fortify the tiny underground storm shelter. His wife, played by Jessica Chastain, is increasingly distressed as his erratic actions and speech intensify. His hearing-impaired daughter needs a costly operation that they cannot afford without his health insurance from his manual labor job, but his continued employment is questionable. The tenuous hold he has on reality seems to be slipping. And he and his wife are aware that Curtis's mother was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia when she was his present age. Curtis cannot determine if what he is dreaming of is from true premonition or psychosis.

            Director Jeff Nichols has made a quietly terrifying film. The story moves slowly, building tension as Curtis vacillates between his belief in and his suspicion of the terrifying visions' accuracy. And Shannon's performance is mesmerizing in its sincerity as he is assaulted with the growing realization that an apocalyptic storm or a severe mental illness have the same devastating ability to tear his family a part.

            

Review of the film The Grey

            There are experiences that leave a person unable or unfit for the world as most of us live in it. If these encounters are survived, the survivor is never the person that he or she was before—now unable to step rightly back into the life once led.

            In The Grey, Liam Neeson stars as a man pit against a pack of wolves like none other ever recorded in the existence of man. These wolves are as big as small horses and ruthless hunters of full-grown male humans. They travel long distances and over great obstacles unexplained. These creatures can blend in with the dark and attack from out of nowhere. They are the baddest wolves that have ever lived.

            The later-in-life action star Neeson plays someone we've seen living on the screen before—the dark and lethal man of past mysteries that the actor been racking up lately in tawdry thrillers like Taken and Unknown.  These two elements, the wolves and the loner, together make up what one would expect is a by the numbers adventure thriller. And to some degree it is, but in this adventure thriller there are also some moments of intense emotion that feel as if they could be real.

            In this story, a ragtag handful of men are stranded in the foreboding Alaskan wilderness by a violent plane crash. They are pursued by the aforementioned numberless pack of wolves as they attempt to survive and find help. When it comes right down to the survival aspects of the story, there are some elements and images that many fear—the ice cold wind and snow that form a blinding, stinging blizzard, the dark creatures that may hunt us in the night, the horror of being pinned underwater just out of reach of the surface—and here they are illustrated before you on the screen. Their nature may be rendered in a heightened manner by the magic of big movie production, but they are the some of what each of us dreams of, the nightmares that plague and pull at our imaginations.

Review of the film The Tree of Life

            Our lives begin long before our births. This idea could be seen as spiritual, but I like to think of it as simply physical—the matter of the cells that make up our beings has been in existence for millennia. That is something that cannot be denied when thought out rationally. We begin in the cells and, therefore, the genes, of our ancestors. The people who become our great grandparents, grandparents and parents, their matter, contains the same stuff that will be that which makes us up as well. 

            The Tree of Life is a film that explores the makings of life on this planet as well as the workings of a small family living in East Texas during the 1950s. It may seem a far reach to relate the story of a few interconnected lives to the beginnings of the world and humanity, but Director Terrence Malick makes an often-moving and beautiful attempt. He starts as far in the past as a life begins—as far back as those interconnected lives deserve in order to frame them truthfully.

            In this small family, Mother and Father behave as drastically far a part in nature as the two poles of the Earth. Mother exudes and behaves with grace and mercy towards her three young sons. Father lives by the strict savagery of nature—he is a disciplinarian and deeply troubled, and his oldest son, Jack, feels the brunt of his anger and frustration. There are memories of love and hurt, beauty and rage that the adult Jack flashes back to as he lives a seemingly empty existence in the present day. He seems to be reaching for something in his past to help him make sense of who he is now. But the pictures are a jumble within his mind that cannot be teased out from the emotions they provoke in him. Jack fights again the battles of his childhood, hears echoes of profound words spoken in his youth, relives moments beyond simple explanation or comprehension. The sun of summer flashes through the leaves of the tree in the front yard and the sprinkler water sparkles between fingers and toes stretched forth.

            Epic and deeply autobiographical, this film searches to tell the simplest and most complex of narratives. The scenes produced by the filmmakers feel so real and also a few degrees heightened above reality. It is a gorgeous and flawed film. Its scope encompasses more than a three-hour movie can relate, but it tries sincerely and with the ambition this story, anyone's story, deserves. 

Review of the film Moneyball

            General Manager Billy Beane can't watch the baseball games he has laid so much time and energy into winning.  Instead, he drives around the city turning on and off the radio to catch bursts of commentary and updates. He can't be there to witness his team's performance; there's too much riding on this, he's put too much of his life into it and risked his family and livelihood. He is the general manager for the Oakland A's in the 2002 baseball season and his team hasn't had a winning record in many years. Beane has overhauled the team and put faith in the art of statistics. It doesn't sound like the makings of a rousing film, but I was genuinely surprised by how invested in Moneyball I became due to the great performances and snappy, witty dialogue and ideas.

            Director Bennett Miller (Capote) adapts the best-selling book with the help of screenwriters Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and Steven Zaillian (Gangs of New York). I didn't understand all of the game being described and I've never been good with statistics, but there was more than numbers being discussed in this film. At one time, Beane had been a hot prospect in the baseball world. He was young and well-built, handsome and intelligent, with a mighty swing. But his major league career proved a bust, he literally choked at the opportunity, and the memories of potential never fulfilled have stayed with him into his general managing. Beane, played by Brad Pitt, knows firsthand what those scouts and other managers he constantly argues with still haven't gotten: that the Billy Beanes of the world have little place in the modern baseball stadium. It takes more than a good jawline and a strong stance to win in a league where the Yankees annual budget is three times that of the Oakland A's. Beane hires a young, brilliant statistician named Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill,  with a knack for crunching player numbers and a deep affection for the game. Then Beane goes about the opening of the 2002 season looking for undervalued but statistically successful players that fit into the team's budget instead of big ticket names that would suck the payroll dry.

            After a lot of firing and hiring, the A's are back in playoff position with a 20 game winning streak. It's a great achievement and has roused the Oakland baseball fans out of their languor with a big league record. It seems that Beane's statistically savvy angle on the game rings true. However, one could say that this streak is a statistical anomaly that should be thrown out with the bath water along with all the other baseball superstitions. But there's a true sense of enjoyment to be had in the A's underdog triumph. Even stats fans can love the game when played well.  The statistics explain only so much, and I could see that as I watched the actors who peopled Moneyball with their nuanced portrayals. It's in the eyes and the spaces around the whip smart words. Math can only explain so much.

Review of the film Haywire

            So Haywire, the Stephen Soderbergh action flick, is a very good movie. I know that it's not just me saying this:  Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 80% fresh score. That's definitely a positive rating from a poll of hundreds of critics from around the country and world. The esteemed Roger Ebert spends most of his review analyzing why young males in this country respond so positively to stories centering on attractive female heroines kicking ass and pummeling the opposition, mostly male, physically and mentally. Maybe it's a pleasure of some sort for these young males—a hidden masochist fantasy playing out before them—that drives so many of these men to seek out these images and tales.  I have to say that most of these heroine driven ass-kicking stories are fashioned and constructed by men, and it could speak to why they are so well-received by a male audience.

            So why am I, as a female, responding so strongly to the images before me in Haywire—of a razor-intelligent and capable woman outwitting and outfighting numbers of strong and smart men--a tale written by a man and directed by a man seemingly for those male audience members I love to hate? I can't fully explain why I loved this movie. There was the angle that this film took, a bit turned or altered from that of most of the action movies I've been previously disparaging.

            Perhaps it’s the masochist in me. But there is something smarter and less condescending about this film’s depiction of a female action star. Suppose we were watching an action film starring a man; we wouldn’t be putting as much emphasis on his acting performance and line readings. We’d be focused on his ability to bear the weight of the action driving the film.

            Former MMA champion Gina Carano stars in the film Haywire. The story is centered around skilled operative Mallory Kane, now retiring from a highly secretive government security contractor. Unfortunately, that last job she performs before retirement is also a set-up. It has been designed to frame and kill her. Instead of becoming a blacklisted corpse, Kane survives and becomes a fugitive from the law. Someone close has double-crossed her, and Kane's life depends upon finding out who and why.

            The majority of the film is action-based, structured and angled around Gina Carano's particular physical skills and abilities. The sequences left me breathless. Her action talent is unmistakable; her agility and presence of mind are there in her every movement throughout the film. Perhaps she isn't the best line reader or dramatic actress; she is up against a formidable cast of distinguished male actors, but there is no doubt that Carano has a future in film with the best of them. Let's just hope it is well-written and directed action thrillers instead of the kinda sad Underworld films.

Review of the film Louder Than A Bomb

            Disclosure: I was there during the years prior to the filming of this documentary. I remember these kids and I even remember parts of their amazing spoken word poems after years. This movie touched me in a way that people who were not present there would never understand. But I’m sure it does wonders for those individuals as well. You can’t help but be affected by the sincerity, verve and talent.

            The film is called Louder Than A Bomb, named for the explosive annual teen poetry slam that takes place in Chicago. The competition was co-founded by an amazing non-profit organization, Young Chicago Authors, which teaches and promotes creative writing and literature throughout the city and surrounding areas. High school aged youths recite personally written poems to audiences of their peers as well as judges. The judges give them scores, and teams and individuals win, yes, but it’s the poem not the points that stay with you long after the slam is finished.

            Directors Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel document the months, weeks and days leading up to the annual competition by focusing on a few enigmatic and diverse handful of participants in 2008. This angle doesn’t lessen one’s understanding of the beauty of the slam; it serves to deepen that understanding. Nova, Nate, Adam and the Steinmenauts slam team are not rosily lit, tentative, one-dimensional young adults. This is a documentary. Most of the television shows and films that feature teen life are written by those with a heavy nostalgia for that period of their lives. They don’t see with the eyes of those who are living it at this moment. These teens are living it; they are living it and shouting about it to audiences who clap and cheer for the realism of their language and expressions. Part of the wonder of the Louder Than A Bomb slam is the audience, full of other teens who appreciate the cadence of a phrase, the unexpected rhyme of a line, the brave effort to speak exactly what you know exactly how it feels to you.

            I recall snatches and pieces of verse all these years later. I volunteered with Young Chicago Authors for a few years after I moved to Chicago in late 2004. I’ve lived here since that year, and this film is the most distinctly Chicago film that I’ve ever seen. It’s because of the words and faces and love of creativity that spills from the projector onto the screen and beyond. It’s true diversity I see there. And the true acceptance that flows from the young people who fill the audience at the competition, listening and responding to the poems being performed. It’s because those poems take me places I’ve never been with a clarity that I could never get anywhere else. Louder Than A Bomb reflects the best that society has to offer. It’s in the stringing together of thoughts and words and gestures into something that has the power to move and inspire. Listen to the poem.

Review of the film Melancholia

Where will you go when the world ends? Who will you be with? And will you look away? Or will you face the end, open your arms and embrace it?

The film Melancholia begins with long, gorgeous strains of the theme from Wagner's Tristan & Isolde and long, drawn out and beautiful shots of scenes that may have never happened. These scenes lead us to understand that another, larger planet is spinning it's way through the darkness towards Earth. Will the two enormous objects collide? In the reality of Director Lars Von Trier, it seems apparent what the answer is to this question.

There is a wedding party inside a sumptuous mansion, lavish and exorbitant, something beyond what the majority of us will ever experience.  The party seems to go on for hours as Justine (Kirsten Dunst), the bride, attempts to smile and bow to her guests and family. But there is a heaviness to her movements and expressions; they come a step too slowly and are a bit stilted. It becomes evident that, despite the beautiful and sympathetic husband, the sudden grand promotion from her boss, the perfection of the festivities and those attending, Justine is not well. And it all comes from within. Her mind is not well.

There are sensations of feeling that cannot be fully understood by those who have ever experienced them. It's to move as if underwater, attempting to walk through the depths of the ocean, fighting the weightlessness, parting the wall of liquid with your hands and shoving, ripping through. Or perhaps, it is like earthy vines wrapping around your wrists, ankles and waist as you attempt to move forward, their grip and gravity pulling you back and down like the heaviest burdens. The world does exist to those under this spell. But it is so overwhelmingly tiresome living in it. Food holds no comfort, companions do not speak an understandable language, rituals offer no easing of tension. Sleep is the only welcome respite.

 Justine lives for these moments, where unconsciousness and dreams offer something beyond everyday existence. It’s a wonder that, with the patterns of her behavior, that she is as tolerated as she is. Those around her quickly come to their boiling points as she languishes in her depression.

But then that new planet draws nearer, so that its coming can be seen in the daylight sky. And Justine suddenly feels lighter, freer, with the end of life closing in on every one of Earth’s inhabitants. Her dark view of the world is becoming true right above her head. And she is soothed that she was always right.

Melancholia is deeply autobiographical for its director. Von Trier has suffered from sometimes crippling depression and anxiety all his life. The film is beautifully executed and the actors, particularly Dunst, inhabit their characters well. She is utterly convincing as someone weighted with a deeply ill mind. But I wonder what Justine’s story would be if she were not of such privileged stuff. How different would she be if she inhabited a lower rung of society? I see Justine in these elements and I do find her tale believable. However, as I watched this film, I speculated about those other 7 billion stories that Von Trier did not tell in his film. In the end, though, they all came to the same fate, it seems.

Will you realize that the end of the world is what you have been waiting for your whole life?

Review of the film Drive

Moments of violence happen everywhere, all the time, and there seems no explanation for most of them. But there are always actions, decisions leading to those seconds and minutes. We just may never know them; their reasons will remain un-divulged by the universe. Be sure they’re there, though, and that a past always proceeds a present.

Ryan Gosling plays the lead character in the new film Drive, unnamed and quiet—a stunt driver for the movies and a car mechanic. He also moonlights as a getaway driver for criminal heists. He has a mantra that he follows for these night-lit jobs: You go in. I start the clock. You have 5 minutes, and I’m yours during that time. A minute on either side of that 5, and I’m gone. He meets a beautiful and kind neighbor, played by Carey Mulligan, and her young, quick to smile son, and that mantra slips from him in a following moment. This moment, laced heavily with his newfound vulnerability, leads to all that comes afterwards—the weighty actions that bring us through the story.

It will come as a surprise to no one that this movie is extremely violent. Nearly every reviewer who has analyzed the film has discussed this. There’s a slow burn to the violence that pervades the end of the story. And it is so shocking because it has taken so long to appear. Gosling’s Driver has been so quiet and coiled throughout the proceedings, but now he is unleashed, brutal and efficient. He is very good at being the kind of violent that the story shows; he is so good at it that one begins to wonder about how he came to be so effective and severe. What in his past lead him to his skill? It certainly isn’t just the part time occupation of a stunt car driver. There has to be more that happened before this. But it’s never divulged in the film. The plot is laser-focused. There are no extraneous details or subplots here to get lost in. The only thing is this story.

            The director, Nicholas Winding Refn (Bronson, Valhalla Rising), has crafted a film that seems deeply felt but also deeply illusive. We feel for these characters, however little we know about them through the pieces the story gives us. It's in the glances, the tone of a single word, the lean of a spine. How does one glean such emotion from so little? I’ve done more with less, believe me. This movie pulls viewers into it like simply opening a passenger side door and slipping inside. It’s just that good.