Sucker Punch

I don't think I was the target demographic for Sucker Punch.  However, I'm not exactly sure who this movie was directed at.  It's full of pretty girls in awesome martial arts scenes, so guys into superhero type movies will like the action, but the story itself, well, it's too clever and odd for its own good.

Girls with guns (and swords and kung-fu skills) can't save this movie from stinking.

After Baby Doll's mother dies, her evil stepfather tries to molest Baby Doll's sister.  She tries to defend her sister, but ends up accidentally shooting her instead of Stepdad.  He uses the occasion as an excuse to have Baby Doll committed to an asylum and claim his late wife's fortune for himself.  Baby Doll immediately leaps into a parallel fantasy world, rallying her fellow inmates in a rebellion.  The action flows between fantasy sequences within fantasy sequences.  The action is intense and visually stunning, which is the whole point.  Other than that, this is a bad movie.  Bad, bad, bad.

Bottom line, 1 star

Meek's Cutoff

I have sometimes thought that it would be cool to be a pioneer to a new territory.  The pre-Colonial Europeans who came to America to settle in a new world, the American pioneers who headed west to largely unknown, certainly untamed lands in hopes of establishing a new life, those are heroes in many ways.  Meek's Cutoff might portray some of those heroes, but not in a way that makes me wish I could have followed their path.

Under the leadership of hired guide Stephen Meek, three families heading west to start a new life get seriously lost.  Meek thought he knew a shortcut off the Oregon Trail.  Tensions run high, the men wonder if Meek is lost or just leading them astray, and an Indian they capture doesn't seem to be any more reliable.  Of course, they can't talk to him, since none of them know the Indian's language.  The stark, high-desert landscape is beautiful, but desolate, and very, very dry.  If they don't find water soon, they may perish out there. . . .

It's a long walk to Oregon.

For a sense of what these early pioneers went through to settle the West, Meek's Crossing, which is based on true events, tells a pretty good story.  But it also does something that drives me crazy in a movie: it just stops.  Call me simple-minded, but I prefer a bit of resolution.  However, the acting is good, the slow-building tension is palpable, and the historical and geographical setting draws you in.

Bottom line, 2 1/2 stars.

Everything Must Go

I'll tell you right now, I hate depressing movies disguised as comedies.  The worst offender ever: Mrs. Doubtfire.  Robin Williams dresses up like an old nanny so he can spend time with his kids.  There's comedy there, but the whole movie is under the dark cloud of the depression of a man who is separated from his children.  How sad.

In a similar vein, Will Farrell, who has been hilarious in several movies and on Saturday Night Live, tries to be funny in a depressing movie.  He plays a somewhat successful businessman whose struggle with a drinking problem gets him into trouble and gets him fired, after some business trip revelry which included a tryst with a female colleague.  So he gets fired, and when he gets home his wife has left, changed the locks on the house, and moved all his things out on the lawn.  He "moves in" to his front yard and contemplates getting his life back together.

OK, there are some funny lines, funny situations, and even some touching moments with the neighbor across the street and the neighbor boy who hangs out with him.  But mostly, it's a bleak, sad picture of a man who has truly hit bottom.  This was painful to watch.

Bottom line, 2 stars.

The Conspirator

The Conspirator may not be the best movie I've seen this year, although it is very good, but the best thing about it is the faith it restores in me in film as a medium.  I am a self-described movie glutton; I watch a lot of movies.  Many of them don't even make it on this blog.  (Sometimes that's the case because I watch a movie that's so bad, I'm embarrassed even to admit I've watched it.  Like the made-for-TV movie I watched last night.  It's so bad I'm not even going to tell you the name!  Other times, it's just that I fall behind in my posts, and put off blogging until I can barely remember a movie enough to say anything about it.)

Back to The Conspirator.  The story begins with the assassination of President Lincoln and the arrest of the conspirators who worked with John Wilkes Booth to pull it off.  One of the conspirators was John Surratt.  He and his cohorts met at his mother's boarding house for their planning sessions.  John is the only conspirator to slip away; his mother, Mary, is arrested and held less for her complicity in the conspiracy than for her usefulness as bait for John.

Believe it or not, Mary is Buttercup, from The Princess Bride.

I have no idea how historically accurate the movie is.  I think it follows historical events fairly closely.  The main plot surrounds Frederick Aiken's defense of Mary.  He unsuccessfully prevents her from being the first woman executed by the U.S. government.  With the period costumes and sets, the movie draws the viewer into the period, telling a story that is not only historically significant but also gripping.  I'm left thinking about how a nation which suffers a major blow seeks out someone against whom to retaliate.  A nation mourning the death of their president found the conspirators to blame and punish; quick, retributive punishment became more important than truth and justice.  After the attacks of 9/11, I wonder how much retribution was done at the expense of trust and justice. . . .  Just a thought.

Bottom line, 3 stars.

Olympia

In 1936, Hitler wanted German, and German/Aryan superiority to go on display for the whole world to see.  Hosting the Olympics gave him the stage, and, to the credit of the Germans, they did raise the bar for the Olympics, elevating the games beyond a sporting event to a spectacle.  German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was there to capture it all on film.

The diving scenes are among the most famous.

The greatest contribution Olympia gives us is the extent to which Riefenstahl documented the events themselves.  The games were broadcast on television, but in a very limited way.  The massive coverage we enjoy of every Olympic event today was unheard of then, of course.  Unlike sports coverage today, Riefenstahl does not emphasize the names, countries, or back stories of the athletes, but the form of their bodies and the mechanics of their feats.  She includes little dialogue or commentary, but focuses on the beauty of motion and athletic skill.  You definitely see more glory than agony of defeat.  Even on decades-old film, Olympia captures the speed and grace of the athletes beautifully.

See how the runners had to dig out their "starting blocks"?

We, of course, have the benefit of historical hindsight watching this today, but I think surely even objective viewers at the time must have been put off by the fawning over Hitler.  Overseeing the games as the grand host, Hitler appears as the almighty game master.  Tens of thousands of citizens in the stands gleefully salute the Fuhrer.  He smugly celebrates the victories of his Aryan subjects.  But--hah!--when that African-American superstar, Jesse Owens, wins medal after medal, beating out Hitler's chosen ones, what did he think then?

The opening ceremonies would have been better without all the goose-stepping and heil-ing.

Riefenstahl's Olympia is considered one of the great sports films and pioneered several filming techniques.  I know nothing about making a movie, or about the technical requirements of certain kinds of filming.  I do know this: most of this movie can be done better today with a low-cost, commercially available, hand-held video camera.  This is not to slight Riefenstahl, but to say that the modern film watcher is spoiled by what we see in theaters and what we're able to film on our own.

As an historical artifact, Olympia is valuable and important both for the Olympics and for the filming of sporting events.  But for purposes of entertainment and enjoyment, you might be left wondering what's the big deal.

A Christmas Carol

Has there ever been a story adapted for the screen (big or small) as Charles Dickens's classic A Christmas Carol?  A search on IMDB returned dozens of hits; I stopped counting after 40.  There are plenty of live action and musical versions, plus the Smurfs, Barbie, Flintstones, Mister Magoo, and the Muppets, and I'm sure many TV show episodes based on the story.

In this 1999 TNT version, surely one of the best adaptations made, Patrick Stewart's portrayal of Scrooge has to rival George C. Scott's from 1984.  I think Scott's Scrooge is the one I remember.  I haven't read Dickens's story in some time, but  this TNT version seems to have made an effort to capture Dickens's time and tone.  I would not be a bit surprised if much of the dialog was straight from the pages of Dickens.

That's the legendary Joel Grey as the Ghost of Christmas Past

A Christmas Carol, in whatever version, tells a wonderful story of second chances.  Although you will look fruitlessly for explicit references to salvation through Christ here, the message of the gospel is implicit throughout.  Even after a lifetime of hard-heartedness and self-centeredness, there is hope for renewal and reconciliation.  Scrooge's nephew personifies the openness of the gospel: even when Scrooge is at his worst, his nephew persists with unconditional love and acceptance.

This Christmas, let's remember the Scrooges among us.  Those neighbors, coworkers, and even family members who live bitter, lonesome lives need to see the love and grace offered through us by the one who came to seek and to save us.  It's never too late to accept Jesus' love, and it's never too soon to share it.

Merry Christmas!

Including Samuel

Last week I attended a screening of Including Samuel with Kelly and Elliot.  It was shown at a local elementary school and moderated by our friend Jennifer, who has attended ARDs with Kelly and assisted her tirelessly with paperwork and ARD preparation.  Including Samuel addresses the challenges of including children with disabilities in mainstream classrooms, a topic that is near and dear to us as we have struggled to get Chloe placed at school.

Samuel is the son of photojournalist and filmmaker Dan Habib.  When Samuel was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, he was forced to face the issue of inclusion, a topic about which he hadn't thought much about before.  Habib follows Samuel's progress, as we see Samuel interacting with his peers at school and participating in the regular education classroom.  The Habibs are fortunate to live near a school whose philosophy of full inclusion accommodates students of varying levels of disability in a single classroom.

Samuel interacts with typical classmates.

Besides Samuel, we meet hip-hop artist Keith Jones, an inspiring adult with cerebral palsy who has not let his disability prevent him from a full life, including working as a music producer, marrying and having children, and functioning independently.  He says the best thing to have happened to him was to be placed in regular education classes, not segregated classes.  Other individuals featured in the film illustrate the clear benefits of full inclusion for both the disabled and their typical peers.

Keith Jones--one inspiring guy!

Habib doesn't try to sugar coat the difficulties that arise with inclusion.  In teacher interviews, we see the range of opinions and emotions, from Samuel's teacher, who believes that full inclusion is the best way for all  children to learn, regardless of speech or mobility problems, to the mainstream teacher who tearfully describes the challenges of reaching both the superbly gifted and the profoundly disabled at the same time.  As one teacher points out, however, the danger of creating separate classrooms for disabled children is that if there is a separate classroom, it will be used, needed or not.

Given our experience with schools which have not practiced inclusion, this quote hit way too close to home: "Inclusion is an easy thing to do poorly.  When we do it poorly, we become convinced that it cannot work."  Even when one parent or one teacher promotes inclusion, a simplistic approach of placing a child with disabilities in a mainstream classroom without adequate support or appropriate modifications can lead to failure.  I fear that in many schools, poor execution has led to suspicion or outright rejection of full inclusion.

While Including Samuel does not provide all the answers, the film does a great service by raising lots of questions, and, most importantly, raising the possibility that full inclusion can and does work.