Author: Chris

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. Someone give me an objective view. I remember loving it in grad school, but I just tried to watch it with the kids, and they were distinctly unimpressed (“Daddy, Daddy, let’s go see Night at the Museum 2 instead; We hear Reynolds loved it”). In fact, they became quite abusive. Was it that bad? Why did I enjoy seeing Jeff Goldblum in chaps? Why did the lines “don’t be mean” and “no matter where you go, there you are” seem profound to me? Was it the drugs? Or is this a lost masterpiece?

Set in 2018, the machines have taken over and they do battle with a fully-formed resistance that has access to submarines, aircraft and secret bases. Skynet is far less omnipotent in this iteration, largely restricted to particular zones, and its assorted machines surprisingly easy to kill. John Connor (Christian Bale) is a local commander at this point, about whom there are vague rumors among the populace that he is the prophet who will save them. He spends his time obsessively listening to old tapes left him by his mother, hoping to hear clues that will help beat Skynet, and inspiring the scattered resistance in scratchy radio broadcasts. Connor’s specific goal is to locate and protect Kyle Reese, now a teenager, but the man who was/will be his father, sent back in time to protect Sarah Connor in the first Terminator. The time paradox implications of him doing so, or failing to do so, are never made clear. Continue reading Terminator Salvation

Is there really no thread for this film? I’m still trying to figure out my reaction, and it is all but impossible to write about without spoilers, so I hope others have seen it. I assume we all know the story: 15 year-old Michael (David Kross) begins a relationship with 36 year-old Hannah (Kate Winslet) in 1958. She disappears and he sees her again when he is in law school and she is on trial for being a guard at a concentration camp. Hannah is convicted. The adult Michael is played by Ralph Fiennes, and he struggles with his memories of his time with Hannah, and reconnects with her as she serves her jail sentence. The title comes from the fact that Hannah asks the young Michael to read literature to her. It subsequently becomes clear that she had also asked girls in the camp to read to her. The law student Michael deduces that Hannah must have been illiterate. Continue reading The Reader

I think we need some burden-sharing here; I should not be the only one on the blog going to the opening day of these summer blockbusters. How about if Jeff goes to see Angels and Demons next week and Gio takes on Terminator Salvation the week after?

There are no surprises here. This is the prequel in which we see the young Kirk enter the Starfleet Academy and immediately get thrown into a battle to save the Earth from rebel Romulans from the future. Continue reading Star Trek

Is really not that bad. It is solid entertainment, full of impressive action sequences (including one great one on Three Mile Island), loosely weaved together with the origin story to Wolverine and his brother, Sabretooth (played by Liev Schreiber, hamming it up). There is little effort made to ponder the dialectics of mutant existence, in contrast to the original movie trilogy, so instead we get a standard story of sibling rivalry, lost love, revenge, and admantium injection. It is fun to see more of the comic book mutants appear as extras, and even Xavier makes a late appearance. But nothing very complicated is being attempted in the movie, and it is a good way to ease into the summer blockbuster season.

As I was buying the ticket, the seller told me to “stay for the credits” and indeed, there is a fairly pointless 30 second scene right after the five full minutes of credits (during which I learned that what appeared to be the Canadian Rockies, were in fact mountains in New Zealand).  I wonder if this was an official message, or just an employee eager than I not miss a second of the origin story.

I can’t find a reference to this movie on the blog, but it is the kind of title that the search function does not easily find. So apologies if there is already a thread. The plot is pretty straightforward: Juliette (Kristen Scott Thomas) is released from prison having served fifteen years for the murder of her six-year old son. She goes to live with her younger sister (who was barely a teenager when she was imprisoned), the sister’s husband and their two adopted Vietnamese children. At first, Juliette is practically catatonic, affectless most of the time, but ready to snap at people who tiptoe around her situation or use polite euphemisms (“‘Inside’? It’s called prison.”). The great bulk of the movie traces the slow thaw and return to normality of Juliette, as people come to terms with her, and she finds herself once again able to love: her nieces, her sister, a man. Continue reading I’ve Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t’aime)

The week of college spring break coincided with my kids’ spring break so, with only a little grading to do, and one conference paper to fiddle with, there was plenty of time to rack up those Regal Crown Club points at the multiplex. Continue reading What I Watched On My Spring Break

A decade after the events that gave us the name took place, along comes this deeply disappointing movie. Battle in Seattle is a fictional account of four days at the heart of the anti-WTO protests. It is, to some extent, a vanity project of Charlize Theron and her husband, Stuart Townsend, who wrote and directed the movie. There is an aspiration to be something like the wonderful Bloody Sunday, a docudrama that shows both sides (or multiple sides) of a dispute in a gritty street-level drama. Continue reading Battle in Seattle

So to Bill Maher’s kind-of documentary about religion. It makes no pretense to being even-handed, nor does it try to persuade anyone who might be wavering (though I think Maher would argue that no amount of balance would penetrate the deep levels of denial necessary for religious belief). It is uproariously funny, and often very powerful. It follows the style of his HBO show with humorous interviews followed by periodic rants which mount in intensity and passion. The final four minutes, with images of nuclear conflagration and ecological disaster accompanying Maher’s almost prophetic (in the good sense) argument about the destructive power of religion left me wordless.

One can question some of the interviewing. Early on he uses subtitles to undermine the legitimacy of one of his interviewees, and some of his sexual innuendo falls very flat on muslim audiences. But he captures the essential comedy of religious belief, and that is his main goal. It is just so incredibly ridiculous. He has a series of interviews with people representing truly obscure religions, usually involving space ships, which are all relegated to the deleted scenes. A pity, because adding them into the main film would have reinforced his point that those religions are not inherently less plausible than the major world religions.

Maher mostly goes after Christianity, and that is where he is most comfortable, but around a third of the film does short takes on Mormonism, Judaism and Islam. On the latter, he mostly mines (bad pun) the role of violence. There is a very early scene in which a black Christian preacher urges young men to stop thinking about women and sex, and direct their passion to religion. It is immediately followed by jolting footage of a car bomb.

So what do you do when it is bitterly cold out, your kids have a snow day, and you can’t be bothered to finish that conference paper? Well, going to watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop would be a mistake. Of course, I didn’t expect much, but the trailer looked amusing and I thought at least the kids would enjoy it. No. Every funny moment is in the trailer, and even those are less funny in the movie. It felt too long at 95 minutes. It never got beyond the obvious visual money shots. I did like Keir O’Donnell as Christian Slater.