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Togo (2019)
Highly enjoyable throwback to the classic age of Disney
If you were a kid in the 60s and 70s and you remember the Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, this is the kind of movie that exemplifies that style. It's sentimental and comforting, But because it's the 21st century, there is the addition of special effects and CGI to evoke the world of mushing and dog sled teams. This won't win any awards but it's well made and highly enjoyable. Yes I shed a few tears.
News of the World (2020)
Adds pious PC anachronisms to Jiles' beautiful story
The child actor who plays Johanna/Cicada is astonishing, and the world or the novel is beautifully recreated in this production. The land, the scenery, the dust and dirt and hardship. That's why I enjoyed this film. However, the script adds several unnecessary right-on additions to Jiles' restrained and humane novel. Yes, we get it, racism and slavery are bad. The dispossession of the Kiowa is tragic. But this film traffics in Noble Savage stereotypes (in one episode not in the novel, the Kiowa act as a kind of deus ex machina at their own expense for the Captain and Johanna, and it's hard to sustain belief). In the novel, Kidd does not harbor Vietnam-type guilt over his participation in the Civil War on the part of the Confederacy. Why would he, in 1870? Hanks is playing the good guy archetype he always does, very competent, but at no point did I see him as a retired Confederate colonel in 1870s Texas. He acts like a Harvard professor. The film is uncomfortable with its own source material, which becomes a bit of a problem. For example, the character of Britt Johnson from Jiles' fictional universe (outlined in several of her novels) is reduced to an anonymous symbol.
Galaxy Quest (1999)
Does art tell lies, or a higher truth?
This movie is a very witty and funny evaluation of Plato's claim that poets (fiction makers) are just liars. An alien race takes a defunct sci fi TV show (think Star Trek) at face value and begs the befuddled cast to help save them from an intergalactic threat. They believe the show is a historical chronicle rather than a work of fiction. Does art tell lies, or does it express a higher truth? You be the judge. It's wonderful to see how even the actors start to believe in their own roles. An entire society models itself on myths of heroism. This movie is about the need to believe in a great narrative that gives meaning to existence. Alan Rickman, as a frustrated Shakespearean actor stuck in rerun and fan convention hell, is hilarious. Tim Allen plays the William Shatner-type captain with the right kind of slightly ridiculous swagger. Sigourney Weaver plays against type as the designated bimbo who is appreciated more for her breasts than her brains. A popcorn movie with some philosophical substance.
The Big Short (2015)
Well-made black comedy for adults about a tough topic
This film assumes of the audience that we are old enough to know what bonds and mortgages are, that bonds are rated on a letter system, and what a FICO score is. If you have this level of basic knowledge going in, you will have no problem following the film's clever and entertaining explanations of CDO's, CDS's, synthetic mortgage bonds etc.
This is not a madcap caper. It's a sobering look at how mass stupidity, self-delusion, and greed resulted in the crash of 2008. I read Michael Lewis's book and I was curious to know how it would be translated into a film. Lewis's book points out the role of the Federal Government in loosening lending requirements and in abolishing Glass Steagall; the film doesn't touch that aspect of the story. Instead it focuses on the obsessive outsiders who actually read the contents of the mortgage bonds and couldn't believe what they saw.The ensemble cast is excellent, and the various threads are drawn together expertly toward the looming disaster. The metaphorical relationships and settings equate American capitalism with gambling in Las Vegas. The house always wins and the losers are the average chumps.
The film subverts the satisfactions of the "heist" genre because the victory of the "heroes" (Burry, Baum etc.) comes at great cost to everyone else, even though there is satisfaction in seeing these prophets in the wilderness vindicated. Ultimately, this movie is about how difficult socially and financially it can be to tell the truth, even when it's in plain sight.
If you lived in New York or in Florida at that time, you will chuckle at the evocation of the bubble period (not that long ago but it seems like a million years ago).
Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Slick, formulaic and fun
My liking for this show is probably based on fond memories of the original Hawaii 5-0 series and the awesome theme music, but I always enjoy watching this updated version. Although the show is not very realistic and it's very sentimental, it's got good production values and a good ensemble cast that works well together through the story arcs. Hawaii is a kind of promised land/last resort for people who couldn't quite make it on the mainland. It's also portrayed as a kind of Asian bridge that has its own society and hierarchy separate from the mainland USA. The 5-0 squad come from all over but are united in their desire to help the weak and see justice done. It's a solid police procedural with endearing, individualized characters, and it acknowledges the Pacific Rim aspect of contemporary Hawaii as a multi-ethnic enclave with strong Asian influence. Book 'em Danno.
Fury (2014)
Insulting to both Americans and Germans
This movie was so unrealistic that I simply could not accept it. Yes, we all know war is hell and all that. But this movie vomited up every cliché of post-Vietnam war movies and swirled them into an ahistorical and insulting mush. I watched it on a Lufthansa flight from Germany to the US and I was actually physically embarrassed by this film. If you are a fan of decent WWII films (i.e. Band of Brothers, Das Boot) you will find this one really hard to take. The Americans are boorish ethnically stereotyped thugs and the German soldiers are inhuman automatons. The civilian women are portrayed as scared whores. It's just awful all around. It's a big budget film with good production values but that's about all that can be said about it.
Justified (2010)
My favorite show of all time
I can't describe the hole that the absence of this outstanding show will leave in my TV-viewing life. It is simply excellent all around. Script, characters, setting, totally believable fictional world: this show has it all. Every episode is full of wonderful dialogue, humor and pathos. The commentary on eternal human nature and on contemporary America is piercing. In the last season alone, we have the pot legalization controversy, the fate of ex-servicemen coming home to a country that has no understanding of what they did in the "sandbox," the lack of opportunity when no community college is available, the pride of a dangerous despised occupation (coalmining), the need for women to bend themselves to the taste and will of the men that control the local economy, the self-serving self-righteousness of law enforcement...it's a Gotterdammerung of a dying way of life and an American tragedy. Boyd and Raylan...the best couple on TV ever.
Frankenweenie (2012)
Tries to be both a children's movie and a serious allegory
This review DOES contain spoilers.
Frankenweenie, like Shelley's Frankenstein, is an allegory about the use and misuse of science. The movie pulls its punches, however, by providing a conventional happy ending for the children in the audience, even though there are some very frightening scenes right beforehand. The movie makes us question the motives of trying to make, and extend, life through artificial means. In some ways I feel the film would have been much more profound if Sparky had been allowed to die at the end. Victor gives him tearful permission not to "come back." It was at this moment that I felt the film achieved some greatness. The words of the ostracized science teacher, that people like what science provides but don't like the questions it raises, were really alive in this final scene.