We Can't Make It Out of Here Alive

I started the year off with two films about impending doom.

I woke up early to watch Melancholia, a film about a depressed woman who gets married a few weeks (months?) before another planet is possibly going to collide with Earth. Of course the depressive is the only confidently realistic one in the bunch.  Happy people are happy because of the illusions they foster.  It's a very stressful ride as we near the deadline and hope the planet will just pass by.  It's reminiscent of Last Night, a Don McKellar film about how a variety of people deal with the end of the world - mainly they search for connections, that one last kiss.  In this film, they scramble for hope.  But no matter how you slice it, death is imminent.  Life is short, enjoy it while it lasts!



I love Kirsten Dunst as she wavers between cute as a button and completely dead inside.  Her face and eyes change dramatically from scene to scene.  And I've loved Kiefer Sutherland since Bay Boy.  But most of the rest were irritating.  It's hard to tell if the people were all acting strangely because death is potentially at their doorstep, or if they were all just strange.  It wasn't a good strange, an interesting strange with a glimmer of brilliance.  It was just weird and mean.  But Dunst was captivating.

Every year on New Years Day I take my kids to a movie.  It's a tradition that's shifted over the years from the older ones to the youngest.  So today we treated ourselves to a cab to check out Happy Feet 2.  It's got some of the characters of the first one, but the mood is substantially darker.  At one point when it appeared that all was lost and hundreds of penguins were going to perish, my little one said, "I hate this movie!"  Yikes.

But of course all creatures large and small pitched in to save the day.  Whew!  



There are philosophical krill that make a few jokes about free will that don't work on any level except that they rhyme with krill.  And they argue about their purpose in life which also doesn't work because, well, they're krill.  But the animation was amazing.  The snow sparkled like diamonds, and the underwater scenes were a delight.  The singing and soundtrack was a lot of fun too.  I had to restrain myself from singing along to this...



And this...



And this....



And, maybe (?) this.

It's got that whole don't try to rise above your station thing going on.  Accept yourself and your limitations, like penguins can't fly and krill are at the bottom of the food chain, but don't be afraid of challenges along the way.  We can do anything if we all work together.

But the kiddies need a warning before hand that it's all going to be alright.

Don't we all.

With Nine You Get Spoilers

I saw 9 last night with my two teenagers. I left the little one at home despite her protests. In the first five minutes I was glad she wasn't there for this particular cartoon. There were some great monsters. It was, in brief, enraging because it's so close to brilliance.

Spoiler Warning

The first hint that this movie has strong religious overtones is that the safe place our heroes use to hide in is a church. Nevertheless...

It's 1939 and war has broken out, but it turns out differently than we might remember. An intelligent nuclear driven machine was created for good but used for bad. Standard. Just like in The Matrix, the machine took over and killed all the people. But the inventor of the machine realized the problem is he didn't give the machine a soul. The atheists in the group might say "a conscience" or "the capacity for ethical determinations." So he makes nine little machines that look humanish and finds a way to impart a portion of his soul in each. He dies making the last of them, 9, because his soul gets completely used up.

What I loved about the film is the idea that each of these nine creatures is part of the inventor. Among others, there's a superego who's obsessed with safety at all costs, little curious dudes, a brutish stoner, an intellect, and a woman - his anima. As a hermeneutical allegory, it was really cool. But that concept falls apart at the end and a few times before.

A few of the creatures get sucked up by the monster machine. They called out from the machine because they were trapped inside. But the machine doesn't ever sway its course. If the inventor was right, that it lack soul, then sucking up the creatures should have altered the machine's agenda - making it goofier after one, and smarter after another, etc. And the solution would be for the others to allow themselves to get sucked up to add to the kindness of the beast. But they don't.

Instead they find a way to kill the machine, and get the dude out. But they come out like souls and fly up to heaven. "Now you're finally free!" Barf. Somehow they should have all stuck themselves together to re-make one full person. But they don't. It ends with 9 and the female and the two little dudes together: a nuclear family reminiscent of the Teletubbies. And they comment that they've got the place to themselves. But what the hell will they do stuck there together? How long before they realize hell is other sentient beings?

It was all still very entertaining to watch. It's just unfortunate that it didn't go all the way - well, that it didn't go in the direction I was hoping. God is such an easy out.

Bitter Film Bites

I ended up watching an oldie on TCM: Panic in Year Zero! with Frankie Avalon in a non-singing, non-Gigety role. It suited my mood because I recently had a very apocalyptic dream. I can't remember it at all anymore, but I do remember the feeling of having it.

I remember a different dream, however, in which I was auditioning for So You Think You Can Dance, and I made it to choreography, but I was wearing big black rain boots, so it was all very awkward. And I didn't want to take the boots off because they were my signature style or something like that. It felt like the end of the world albeit not literally.

Back to the film. It's 1962, and the Russians nuked most of the large cities in the U.S., and Ray Milland and family were fleeing into the countryside (where the radiation can't possibly get them). There was general chaos everywhere as people turned to lawlessness in the face of imminent death. One scene really made me mad. The dad and son go off hunting, and the daughter wants to come. But, of course not, silly. Girls shouldn't be using guns. Go back in the cave to make us lunch. Then the girl is raped by two bad guys, and the dad and son hunt them down and kill them (instant death with one shotgun blast to the belly - and no blood!).

It bugged me that the guys were obviously not very good protectors of this girl, yet they refused to teach her how to use a gun or even let her hold the thing for good measure. She wasn't allowed to protect herself yet was left alone. And it was all her fault for leaving the cave in the first place. She should know her place and do what she's told.

I got the same outraged feeling watching a very different movie: Straw Dogs. About his film, Sam Peckinpah said, "I didn't want you to enjoy the film. I wanted you to look into your own soul." Well alright then. I didn't enjoy the film. Even worse, I watched it with a bunch of guys who did.

The movie's about a mathematician and his pretty wife moving into the country where she gets raped. Apparently people should stay in the city for safety. Anyway, the wimpy math-dude gets clever over the course of the film and defends his home against a whole tribe of drunken rapist types. But that's just the thing - he defends his home, not his wife. The brutes sent him on a wild-goose chase while they buggered his woman, and he's more angry at being duped than outraged at the violation his wife has endured at their hands. His ego rates way higher than his wife's body and soul.

At the end, the nerd is setting up traps in his home. The wife is a bit useless. And my bf at the time turned to me and said, "If that ever happened to us, you better be more help to me than that!" He was right there with the protagonist. And I was right there with the wife. I was incensed that the idiot had no ability to protect his wife, yet she was offered no means to protect herself. It's his job to protect her, and he failed. She paid the price, but that's not what really matters. It's his feelings that matter. And it would have been just as bad for him, I'm guessing, had she successfully protected herself against attack. That would be just as demoralizing.

That potential scenario reminds me of New York, New York. There's a woman who can take charge of her life, and De Niro runs her down every time she tries. Instead of being her supporter, he's her competitor. Thank god he left. He was just a burden - but a charming burden.

The women in these first two movies were just offered up to the men, and the focus wasn't on their pain, but on how their poor men were holding up against some type of theft. In the Panic film, the mother tells Ray that their daughter is more worried about him than about herself. The poor dad is having to cope with his little girl's loss of innocence, and that's where our sympathy is meant to dwell.

And in NY, NY, Francine has to celebrate alone when she finally signs a record deal. Jimmy can't feel joy for her accomplishments because it puts him in second place.  And, apparently, that's what should really matter.

Bugger.

Unpopular Movie Reviews

I caught up on some movies I've been meaning to watch. Three in fact: Children of Men, Babel, and Night at the Museum.  And, I'm not sure why, but my opinion of these films isn't quite meshing with the real reviews they're getting. It could be, of course, that the paid reviewers don't know shite. You be the judge.

I rarely have the time to see a lot of movies. And it seems the number of films available is increasing exponentially. So I only go if a film gets at least three stars in the Globe and Mail. In fact, if Liam Lacey likes it, I'm guaranteed to like it. Up until now.

Spoilers below. Be warned.

(Although this view of winning films might not be something new. I must admit I was just like Elaine, from Seinfeld, watching The English Patient. Borrrring. I just couldn't connect to the characters in a meaningful way. Or when I read Life of Pi, which everyone raves about. I really liked the religious discussions in it, and the idea was interesting. And I loved the whole philosophy of interpretation and choice in narratives. But I could care less about the character. I had no emotional involvement with the book at all, so, as far as I'm concerned, it wasn't a great novel. His whole family died, and I didn't feel remotely sad for him. Eh, life's rough.)

Children of Men was acceptable. It kept me interested. I liked the feel of the movie, like an early 60s British film. And I loved the soundtrack. But it wasn't amazing or anything. It made me think of Escape from New York and Logan's Run, two other not-so-amazing movies. Just a guy and girl running from everyone, never sure who they can really trust. And, oh yeah, this time there's a baby that's a big deal to everyone in the world. I guess the premise of there being only one baby born after 18 years was too far-fetched for me to really get emotionally involved with. And everyone seemed so doomed from the get-go, that I didn't allow myself to get too attached anyway. I was ready to see them get picked off one by one.

Babel got a bunch of nominations for awards so it must be good. Apparently. But holy cow is it ever going to end? It felt like it was dragging on forever. And it was so bloody predictable. Of course they're the parents of the little kids. And of course the gun was from the guy the cops are looking for. Ya, ya, everybody's connected and we're all affecting one another all the time, blah blah blah. And isn't the jumping from one disparate plot to another to another just getting to be old hat by now?

I didn't care if the shot tourist survived or not. Whatever. The kids dying in the desert might suck, but I didn't know them that well. The boys playing with gun? Well, what did you expect, dad, giving the kids a gun and all? However, I was quite taken with the sexually-precocious girl. And I was outraged that we didn't get to see the final note she gave the cop. I really want to know what it says. I wonder if her dad was sexually abusing her at all, given her aggressive nature in that way. Or was it a suicide note? Out of the whole film, she was the only character I cared about at all. The rest were just in the way, annoying me, making me wait to see her scenario play out. Alone, that one girl's bit could have made an excellent short film. Altogether, not so good.

But, of course, because I'm regressing to a ten-year-old, I absolutely loved Night at the Museum. I was on the edge of my flipping seat, I kid you not, so concerned was I of the fate of these animals and tiny people. It's got that whole, "clap your hands if you believe so Tinkerbell can live" thing going on, which is okay and all. But more importantly, I've lived this job. I know what it is to be too cocky for my own good, and I know how it feels to have not read the instructions and to have to work from the seat of my pants. I do it every day! And, he keeps thinking and tries another new thing the next day, screwing up but still doing his best. That's what we do.

It falls apart a bit when he figures out exactly how to keep everything running smoothly. I prefer the idea that he'll keep having to think up new ways to make it all work. That resonates more with me. But then it might never really feel over. How can a Hollywood movie end if the problems aren't all solved to a fault?