Pete's Dragon (2016)

The other night, we decided to watch the 1977 Disney film of "Pete's Dragon". My kids watched it a lot when they were young and it seemed like a good thing to do in getting up for the remake that opened this weekend. As I watched it, I remembered how painful it was to experience back when the kids were four or five. It is looong. The songs are not memorable at all, and the actors either ham it up excessively or they are stiff as a board. Whatever the new film was going to bring us had to be better than this misbegotten piece of nostalgia that I hope never to have to sleep through, I mean watch, again.

Happily I can report that I was correct, this new version is a substantial improvement and will be an excellent family film for kids over the age of seven or eight. The one major reservation I have is that the film begins with a family vaction that goes dramatically wrong. It is traumatizing and the little guys might be scared and have nightmares about what happens. It is a scene that is done in the gentlest of ways but it is still tough to take when you are with your family. Once the opening five minutes is passed, the rest of the movie is a delight with some poignant moments of sadness but nothing that the kids won't have seen in a dozen other stories.

In a way, this is a different version of "The Jungle Book", with an orphan being raised by a wild anima but ultimately needing to be returned to a human society.  The animal in question does not really talk or sing but that does not mean that it does not emote. "Elliot" was a cartoon in the musical version and he was not always a creature that you could identify with. Ever since CGI has been used in movie special effects, Dragons have been a subject. From Dragonheart, to Reign of Fire, up through The Hobbit Films and Game of Thrones, these animals have been used as characters . Most of the time they are terrifying, sometimes they have voices but always they have been dangerous and scaly. The film makers here have managed to make a dragon lovable without stripping him of his dignity. Anyone who has owned a dog will see familiar expressions and behaviors expressed by Elliot. This is a story about a boy and his dog, who happens to be a dragon. The closest I've seen to this style dragon in the past is "the Luck Dragon" from "The Neverending Story". Elliot is furry and the face is expressive, I also liked the addition of his body colors changing in response to a particular touch.

Bryce Dallas Howard makes back to back appearances in consecutive years in movies featuring large animals run amuck. Unlike "Jurassic World", she is unlikely to get eaten, but her costar is a CGI invention. Robert Redford is in this film in a peripheral way, but as usual he is a welcome presence. I did not know that Wes Bentley and Karl Urban were in the film so that was a nice surprise. Young Oakes Fergley, who plays "Pete" is a good find for the part of a young child living in the wilderness who becomes a fish out of water in suburban/human surroundings. He is still very young so it is hard to say what his potential is but he is already a better actor than the child cast in the 1977 film.

There will not be any great twists in the story, it does feel in fact very much like an older Disney film when it comes to the plot. What makes it better than those creaky films like "Blackbeard's Ghost" or "The Love Bug" is the quality of the production and the actors involved. Everyone treats the story here seriously and the events that happen only stretch credibility a little bit at the climax. The last twenty minutes feels right out of a dozen other films even though the plot is different and the characters are not the same either. If you are a sentimental adult who can suspend their cynicism  for an hour and a half, or if you have kids and you want them to see a quality family picture, than "Pete's Dragon" should do the trick, and you won't have to get an annoying Helen Reddy song out of your head afterwards.

TCM Animal House

So here we are six years after I last posted about this film. "National Lampoon's Animal House" really does qualify as a classic film, in spite of how rude, irreverent and sometimes crass it can be. There were other wild comedies of the seventies but "Animal House" introduced the off the wall sensibilities of John Landis, The National Lampoon Staff that included Harold Ramis, and of course John Belushi. All you "Ghostbusters" fans out there, if there was no "Animal House" there would have been no "Ghostbusters".

The cast of this film is also amazing when you look back on it. It was Kevin Bacon's first movie, Tim Matheson moved to the Big screen from TV roles, Tom Hulce is launched onto the movie going public and Karen Allen is just three years away from Raiders. The story I have heard is that Donald Sutherland turned down a piece of the backend in favor of s straight paycheck, and if he had taken a piece of the action he'd have made a hell of a lot more from the small part he played.

This is my daughter Amanda's favorite comedy, primarily because it embodied the Spirit of Troy Trojan Marching Band's attitude about how to enjoy college life. My memories of it are incredibly positive but it is not just a nostalgia trip to see it. The movie still kills in the laughter department. Belushi was not a silent star but more than half his role consisted of his physical comedy rather than dialogue. The movie is eminently quotable, and because it was set before it's time in the first place, it has aged very well.

Here is the Band doing the Theme from Animal House [by the way, written by pop singer Steven Bishop, who appears as the guitar playing Romeo at the Toga party]

 


Somewhere, Amanda is in there, this was her last year playing for the Spirit of Troy before she graduated.

The Film Screens again this coming Wednesday, Now Take that Pledge pin off your uniform, drop and give me twenty, and go see this on the big screen.

Florence Foster Jenkins

A few months ago on a podcast that I listen to, one of the guests had a rant about some of the crappy films she saw on the horizon. Chief among them was this Meryl Streep starring vehicle. Based only on the trailer the podcast guest dismissed it as Oscar bait not worthy of even thinking about. Now I have never been put off by the fact that someone has an opinion, but it seemed a bit harsh at the time, even though the film did not strike me as something I felt I must see. I understand the sentiment, after all it does look like it is this years entry in the Streep slot for an Academy Award. The movie does come from director Steven Frears who has often been associated with some highbrow films that look like they are seeking attention, the thing is though, they usually deserve the attention. This film is no exception.

Had I listened to the advise of this blogger/critic I might have skipped over this film, as it is, that would have been a mistake. This movie has a lot going for it, especially the heart of the story which is very well told and entertaining as heck. Let's start with the elephant in the room, the star. We know that Meryl Streep can sing. "Ricki and the Flash", "Into the Woods" and "Mama Mia" have established that. So in a sense this film is the real acting challenge because Florence Foster Jenkins apparently could not sing. Streep is very convincing as the music lover with flat pitch and sight blinded by desire. It appears that much of the story here is true although substantially adapted to make a comedic-drama work on film. Maybe some of you will be familiar with the story of Mrs. Miller, an amateur singer who had success as a novelty recording artist in the 1960s. "Florence Foster Jenkins was her progenitor.

The real strength of the film however in in the performance of Hugh Grant, who reportedly came out of semi-retirement to work with Streep. As Jenkins husband St Clair Bayfield, he is his usual foppish English type but with a great deal of heart and wherewithal . At one point in the story it appears he is a cad, but as the film unwinds we learn that love is not always the thing that we define it as. Notorious for mugging on camera, Grant is more realistic in his facial expressions and more tender in his vocalizations than you have probably seen before. I have always been a fan of his but not necessarily because his acting was excellent but because he was well cast and charming. Today he impressed me as a thespian and I'm sorry to say that a film like this will generate more critical attention for the leading lady than for the gentleman.

Simon Helberg, from "The Big Bang Theory" is much more the traditional comic relief. As Cosmé McMoon, her pianist accompanist, he gets several chances to visualize the absurdity of what is passing for music. His performance is much quieter than you will see in the television series and there is more substance to it. One of the things that this movie does is imbue it's characters with real heart and Helberg has several scenes where his performance adds immeasurably to our acceptance of what is happening. Actress Nina Arianda is not a person I was familiar with, but she puts a lot of gusto in her role as Agnes Stark. She is a character that you might quickly dislike, but in the end she becomes a interesting champion for the music lovers that turn a deaf ear to our tone deaf heroine.

Maybe one of the reasons the film works for me is the setting. NYC in the period of WWII is maybe the most romantic time I can think of in American History. The modern aesthetic of clothes, architecture, music and culture are seemingly so perfectly balanced at this point. Any time perion that we ourselves have not lived through can be made to seem romantic, and the taxicabs, concert halls and dining rooms of hotels all look great in the set design of this movie. I know that Liverpool stood in for the streets of New York in several scenes, and that might seem odd except that Liverpool has sustained the look of that time period whereas NY has moved on, so in the end it works quite well.
Another reason I find the story compelling may be an addition made by screenwriter Nicholas Martin. In the film, one of the things that motivates Florence Foster Jenkins is her sympathy for American Servicemen during the war. As the character quotes Beethoven at one point  "Wrong notes are of little consequence, but to play without passion is inexcusable", Florence Foster Jenkins represents the kind of passion, for music and in the one case in the film, the military, that makes Beethoven's reported words real.

I am surprised as anyone at how much I enjoyed this film. I know I never had any hipster cred to lose anyway, but I suppose now my application for official hipster status will be automatically rejected in the future. I thought this was a sentimental and warm story, told with a great deal of humor and excellent performances from the leads. The movie looks grand and the director moves it along quite well without necessarily showing off. I'm glad to say that I "passionately" endorse this film, regardless of what my expectations might have been.

Suicide Squad

I'm not a comics guy as I'm sure I've said a couple of times before. My guess is that the number of people like me, those who will see a comic based movie without knowing the whole cannon, outnumber the people who can tell you that the eye-shadow on the Joker is inconsistent with the history established in volume 274 of the Dark Knight Series 3 featuring the four fingered Joker variation (or some such detail).  In other words, I'm not so invested in the characters that I can't handle change. There was a lot of talk when this film was being produced about whether it could meet the fans expectations. Other than Harley Quinn and the Joker, I've never heard of any of these characters, so maybe my opinion will be discounted by some because I am not invested. As the summer season came on, the buzz was that "Suicide Squad" would be the film to make the comic book fans happy. When the first reviews started coming in, there was a stampede of disappointment and negative word of mouth started to set in. From many of the critics, you would think this film was a bomb. The box office so far has to be comforting to the film makers in spite of the poor notices. But, from the view of this outsider, the film is largely successful in what it is attempting, and suffers from the same problem that all big action films do, a weak antagonist makes a weaker story.

We are fortunate that we do not have to wade through a series of stand alone films to be set up in this universe. The first half hour or so of the movie, inventories the characters, highlights their quirks, and establishes personality for them very effectively. These small vignettes are probably the most effective sequences in the movie. I will say that it was a bit of a give away that one member of the team is introduced when they are put together and there was no B Roll on their character in the first section. So guess which character will be sacrificed to show that the secret government agency in charge means business. There has also been talk that Jared Leto's Joker has been significantly excised from the film, that seems to be a lot of hot air. The Joker Character figures in one of the background stories, participates in a parallel story, and is part of the coda of the film. It is true he is not on the team, but that does not mean that his presence is insignificant.  Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn will certainly be the breakout character in the film and she can expect to explode in the business over the next few years. Miss Robbie is extremely watchable and carries off her part here with great panache.

Let's discuss a couple of weaknesses of the film. It turns out that the Big Bad the group has to face is created by the attempt to create the group in the first place. All of the characters are given such menacing  back stories that the quickness with which the authorities try to establish a working team seems unrealistic ( as if anything in this didn't already). There are a couple of actions that have to be done by the team that seem unnecessary, including the rescue of an unidentified figure at ground zero of the main fracas. It also makes no sense that the plan of action being followed involves a simple explosive device, when the secondary antagonist seems to be impervious to other weapons. Also, the idea that it could take out a member of the team also seems inconsistent with what has been established earlier. In other films, the duo of Jai Courtney and Joel Kinnaman would threaten to but me to sleep. Both of these guys have been charisma free in other films, but this time around they get a chance to shine a little and Courtney especially makes a favorable impression.

The main villain seems a bit of a stretch, but in the D.C. Universe they are working at creating, maybe it is plausible. The representation however is so horror film fetish bound that it looks ridiculous. At the climax of the film, the bad guy is basically doing the most stupid voodoo dancing and arm waving this side of the 1976 remake of King Kong.  The problem that happens when you give a character powers to make them a worthy opponent is that you also have to find a flaw that gives the heroes (sic) a chance. Things did not come together well in this regard and the confrontation feels like a giant CGI smackdown without much credibility.

The soundtrack is packed with music from the last fifty years so there will be plenty that audiences can relate to, although sometimes the choices seem a little hokey. The color palate of the film is neon without becoming overly cliched and tiresome. There is also a lot more humor in this film than the two films that preceded it in the MCU queue. There are some very clear tie ins to this years Batman v. Superman and Bruce Wayne has a couple of scenes that tie it together even more. Viola Davis is a stone cold hard ass as Amanda Waller, the covert intelligence officer responsible for the team.  There is a point where Will Smith's Deadshot asks facetiously, "and we're supposed to be the bad guys?", it is Waller's character that he is referring to. So I'm down with the characters and the performances for the most part. I also think the movie looks very solid. Where they lost me was in creating an obstacle for the team to overcome. It feels a bit too overheated. It may not be the widespread opinion, but I think this film is fine and it accomplishes what is needed, a set of premises for the film and an outrageous team being put together in a reasonable manner. Now all Ben Afflect has to do as Batman, is repeat the process, only recruit the Justice League members with a bit more elegance. Ignore the bad word, it's a solid film with some flaws but also a lot going for it.

Lights Out

Sometimes you see a trailer that works and you convinced beyond your better judgment that the film being advertised will live up to the 130 seconds you just watched.  Lights Out could have been one of those experiences,  if only it had sustained the opening segment of the movie. As happens all to often with horror films, once you get past introducing the premise,  the screenwriter hasn't figured out where to go.

This is a ghost story with an good concept to begin with. The spook can only be seen in the dark  and bright lights are exactly the kind of protection that every frightened kid imagines them to be. The real nightmare of the story however is the notion that mental illness has taken hold of the person you are dependent on and love, but there is nothing you can do about it.  A young boy and his older half sister, who has moved out because of these reasons, must try to cope with a system designed by legal experts rather than mental health professionals. If this had been a bigger part of the story,  the idea could be sustained.  This is a scare flick so suspense comes from jump cuts and creepy sounds rather than the mental horror of coping with a sick loved one.

The set up is fine as I said. An early spirit attack puts the boy in the awkward position of having to question his mom's sanity.  He turns to the estranged sister but her hands are somewhat tied by the legal system.  They try to get past those hurdles but the boogeyman interrupts. Drama turns into mechanical fear of the dark and what sudden thing we will see. When explanations are proffered,  the story starts to lose credibility and the answers make no sense anyway.  It turns into a game of hide and seek  with the spirit, and someone turns the lights off.

Surprisingly with a female lead,  and a theme strongly dependant on Mom, the most appealing characters are the two guys. The young brother gets our sympathy and he is the one with the most sense in the film. A casual boyfriend,  who thinks that the relationship is more than that,  is given a more appealing character than our heroine.  The mother is creepy at the right times,  but the background provided to explain the haunting is so thin, it doesn't really work. Mom got the short stick on character. Our lead, Teresa Palmer, does really try to deal with the situation as a real person might, but because her character is supposed to be rebellious and an isolate, it is sometimes hard to believe the things she is asked to do on behalf of the family she left.

The secret to the haunting is convoluted, preposterous, and not well explained. The discovery of the truth requires some pretty fantastic luck to start with. The more that it gets talked about though, the less sense it makes. The resolution to the plot depends on a psychic twist that is not well set up and is completely un-examined but it is the end of the story and no additional stinger is added to get a last minute jump. I did like the fact that it ends like a real story and not a horror film trope.

Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party

Dinesh D'Souza is a provocateur for conservatives in much the same way Michael Moore is for liberals (or progressives). He is also becoming quite the entertainer along with his sometimes polemical political point of view. This is his third film in four years, and while it does include the usual talking heads and edited footage of public news footage, he has inserted a number of things into this film that make it more cinematic than strictly propaganda piece. As a result, it seems his documentaries have been financially successful if not politically so [President Obama was Re-Elected despite a big splash from D'Souza's first film "2016: Obama's America".

I personally am dismayed by the choices we are offered by the major parties this November. Donald Trump is a reprehensible huckster who has no knowledge of how government works and has the rhetorical skills of a nine year old on the playground. If someone is willing to make a movie exploring this point of view, I am willing to see it and offer my thoughts on it. Right now, the shoe is on the other foot. Hillary Clinton, who is likely to be our next President, gets shellacked by D'Souza in this film, and it will leave a mark, regardless of her margin of victory. The level of perfidy is unmatched by any American political figure since Aaron Burr, and that includes Tricky Dick Nixon. The voters will probably elect her but it looks like no one trusts her, she has some of the highest unfavorability numbers of modern polling. Maybe that will make some of D'Souza's more outlandish arguments easier to swallow. The self destructive choice we have before us will be more difficult when anyone see's this film, it is for partisans, but it also has some solid documentation to go with it.

All arguments are based on choice. The argument this film makes involve which interpretation of events you choose to believe. The contrast between the two parties, from an historical perspective, is largely accurate. The twist comes in how the reversal of roles was achieved. The film maker has forceful opinions about that. One of the things that he does effectively is bring in side stories and events that illustrate the position he is taking. The story of Ida B. Wells is a good example, it carries his theme on historical facts but it is dramatized in a very interesting recreation of history. The segments with Andrew Jackson leering at his female slaves and coldly ordering fierce punishments is a bit cheesy. Many of those sequences however are written directly from the words of the people involved, so it makes the point feel more real.

The start of the movie features a couple of things that show that this is an entertainment. A piano playing character singing a political screed ala Garrison Keillor is a tip-off that it is OK for us to laugh occasionally. The graphics in the titles convey humor and look very professional, so the quality of the film is unlikely to be challenged on cinematic competence [I'm sure most of the criticism will be political]. Just as Michael Moore inserts himself into the films he makes, D'Souza is a character in his movies. Here, he actually has a pretty good story hook to go with the points he is making. Having been convicted of violating campaign finance laws, he is punished in a manner that seems from his perspective, disproportionate to his offense. He uses the time he spends doing community service and sleeping in a correctional facility each night, as a framing structure for his premise that the political forces of the Democratic Party are the equivalent to a street gang.  

The goal of the movie is clearly to focus attention on the flaws that the writer/director sees in the Democratic party and their standard bearer this year. Most of the material is not particularly new but it is put together in a very effective way that could be persuasive to those who do not already have an opinion about the former Secretary of State. Her political opponents will cheer at the directness with which some of the claims are made and the use of first person testimony and tapes of Hillary's voice in regard to a rape case she handled years ago is damning.  The four part strategy of a criminal con plot, outlined by one of his fellow inmates, is most strongly demonstrated in the one point that says "deny, deny, deny". There are several examples of Hillary denying things that are later shown to be fundamentally true, but for which she continues to refuse responsibility for. Other segments require inferences that do not have the same degree of certainty to them. The viewers will be forced to accept his point, research the argument or ignore it entirely. You can see that if the first two are more likely results, D'Souza will consider his job accomplished. 

If Donald Trump had any real political instinct, or sense of what works when it comes to campaigning, you'd think he would plagiarize the script of this movie and not the words of FLOTUS. There are at least three sections near the end of the film that would make strong campaign ads and might move voters away from her, although it probably will not drive them to him. I rarely hear him make an argument, I only hear claims and insults from his campaign. You might not like or agree with D'Souza [and I know many of my friends on line who read these posts won't], but at least he is making an argument. 

The outcome of the election will depend on a policy choice you make; who should I vote for? This film supports the proposition that some one other than Hillary Clinton or any Democrat should be your choice. I can't say that the film will tip people in that direction for sure, but the secondary issues of fact and value are likely to be influential and that is at the heart of the movie. Let's face it, critics of Clinton will go to have their beliefs validated, and supporters of Clinton will stay away the movie to  avoid some cognitive dissonance. Here is the math:

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Star Trek Beyond

I will tell you up front, I'm a Trekker. I'm not the type to do cosplay or read every variation of the stories, official or unofficial, but I've been watching Star Trek since 1966 and I'm a fan of the show and much of the philosophy. I know that J.J. Abrams got a lot of s*** from fans because he emphasized the action more than the cerebral, although in the context of a two hour movie, I think that criticism is hollow, especially for Star Trek Into Darkness. I also thought the first film from 2009 was the best film of that year. There, I said it and you now can filter this post as you think fit. Star Trek Beyond is a major let down for me. I found it lacking in depth, confusing to follow, full of plot holes and guilty of all of the criticisms that people have made about the previous two films (minus the lens flare).

As I was traveling a couple of weeks ago, the electronic poster boards were big and ubiquitous in the London area for this film. I hated that I had to wait until we got home, almost a week and a half after it opened to see it. After seeing it however, I'm satisfied to be commenting on it a day later than my usual posts would go up because there is not much here to get excited about. I'd hoped that the influence of comedy writer and actor Simon Pegg would be enough to make the film feel more humanistic and emphasize the comradeship of the crew more. My guess is that the bits that were funny, he is responsible for, but the overall structure, plot and characters are the result of multiple hands and it is a mess. As usual, no spoilers here, but what the hell did the villain need with the macguffin when his weapons systems and technology are so easily able to defeat Star Fleet  vessels as demonstrated early in the film? The backstory and transformation of the character Krall makes almost no sense. There is a seed of an idea for a philosophical discussion of the need for conflict, but it basically goes nowhere except to become cliches in the mouths of both our heroes and the villain.

When the ship met it's end in Star Trek III, I was moved. When it has subsequently been destroyed or damaged  so substantially that they just rebuild it and move on to the next episode, there is a loss of engagement with the audience. This is one of the things that has been missing from the rebooted series, a sense of loyalty to the craft and the crew. Except for the main figures, everyone else is an extra that hardly bears mentioning much less mourning, they might as well all be wearing red shirts at the start of the story. Speaking of secondary characters, there is an explanation of the lead villain in the story, but the data on all of the other bad guys is not clear at all. A couple of them actually have names and it is not clear if they were with their leader when transformed or if they came from later groups or if they are indigenous and represent the pure form of the species. This film is in such a rush to get to the next action sequence that they don't bother with basic explanations and the ones that they do come up with are the techno gibberish that often fills the dialog of a Trek film, only now it is delivered at warp speed.

There are a few things that work pretty well in the film. I think the relationship between Spock and Kirk continues to develop and I liked that Bones and Spock end up spending time together. Karl Urban has been a great Dr. McCoy and he has all the best lines and comic moments in the film. The character of Jaylah is potentially a good add to the character mix but her dialog is often so "you Tarzan, me Jane" that the character mostly has to be appreciated for the action scenes. Since they have come up, let's talk about the action, it is a special effects and editing nightmare. It is often so dark you can't see what is happening, and the constant movement of the set, while interesting, renders perspective meaningless. It is very difficult to tell what is blowing up and what is causing it to do so. Sometimes you can't even say who is in the scene. The sequences are edited frantically, as is the style these days, which means there is almost no development of tension in any of those sequences. Everything is spectacle and narrative goes out the window. There is a long sequence with a motorcycle that was awkward and the effects shoots are not as well paired up with the live action as they need to be to sell it. This was at least one place where the quality of the visuals was not up to snuff. On the other hand, there are some solid mixes of make up and CGI effects to make some of the alien creatures seem real. I must say however that it sometimes feels like an extended version of the Cantina sequence from Star Wars.

So on the plus side you have some good visuals, and a few funny lines from Dr. McCoy and once in a while from someone else. On the negative side, you have a confusing story, a lack of character development (being gay and having a kid does not count if they are only props and not integrated into the story), plot holes that should make for some great YouTube parodies in the next few years. The movie also feels small, despite the size of the base they are ultimately trying to protect. There is no big issue except the bad guy wants to destroy things. Once again the old adage proves true, "You are only as good as the villain", and in this case, Idris Elba can't compensate for a poorly written antagonist. Look, it's still Trek and you should see it, but it is closer to "Nemesis" or "The Final Frontier" than I think anybody wants to admit.