ROBOT & FRANK Movie Review

(minor spoilers): A sweet little movie set in the near future and explores some fairly serious issues of memory loss, senior care, family, love and friendship. Frank Langella gives a masterful and moving performance as an aging ex-“second story man” who is has holes in his memory, is slowly sliding into Alzheimers yet remains high functioning. His family, a son (played with just the right amount of exasperation and love, commitment and guilt by James Marsden) and daughter (Liv Tyler playing a bit of a save-the-world/no time for family and something of a political extremist) drop in on Frank to assuage the guilt of family who is aware that something is not quite right with dad, but are busy with their own lives and need some help. Marsden’s Hunter has made the 5 hour trek to check on and clean up after Dad every weekend for just a little too long, and one weekend, brings a Robot to be his caregiver. This is where the movie really takes off.

Watching the Robot (who is obviously modeled after ASIMO, the Honda Robot that is featured at Disneyland’s Innoventions) and Frank’s relationship develop is where the fun and real story is, but watching Frank flirt with the pretty librarian (Susan Sarandon, who looks amazing and is so kind to this man who sometimes forgets what just happened the day before) is the heart.

The effects were very realistic, and the projection of the future of technology feels just right. I loved the little one person car and the wall phone! Robot was appropriately clever, patient, calculating, therapeutic and completely rational, perfectly suited to care of an elderly patient who needs just a little looking after, and is programmed to encourage a systematic strengthening of his patient’s mental processes through schedules and hobbies. I am sure the programmers did NOT have this particular hobby in mind!!

There are places I thought this movie was going to go, but the story veered off into other more interesting, personal and ultimately heart-breaking directions. The music was a little odd, and rather than underscoring the emotional journey, kept things just slightly off… but then again, maybe that was the point, there was something just not quite right about this man, a much as we wanted to believe in him.

The ending is not quite as satisfying as I would have liked and seemed a bit rushed, but I was ultimately left with the afterimage of sweet story of a strong man incrementally disintegrating into a hollowed out version of himself.

MOVIE RATING: 7 out of 10. THEATER RATING, Laemelle Theater on The BLVD in Lancaster, CA: 9 out of 10… as ever, a FABULOUS and very comfortable movie experience!

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Movie Review (Spoilers):

I waited a bit to see this movie, for although I really like the Batman story (comic books, I mean) and the sheer near-reality of the ‘Verse (science-y gadgets and a mortal hero rather than aliens and radioactivity/gammas rays, etc), I have been less than enchanted by most of the Batman movies, except the first one… I really liked Michael Keaton, and Tim Burton was the quintessential director of a dark but fantastic and super-stylized Gotham.

Jeeze. I am going off track here. Back to THIS movie, The Dark Knight Rises.

Yeah, it’s dark. Yeah, Batman’s in it. Yeah, Catwoman/Selena and Batman have a “thing”.  Yeah, there are lots of crazy gadgets.  Yeah, there are lots of twists and an assumption that you remember absolutely everything from the previous movies.

But there is no heart in this movie at all.

My biggest disappointment is probably what so many younger people liked about it. It is relentless, a hugely dark, heavy-handed myopic tour de force that is so extremely focused on its very thin story thread that everything else fades into the background as unimportant. The world is black and white, except that while the black is truly black, the white is varying shades of dark grey. Heroes are conflicted and with few exceptions, horribly flawed and often simply unlikable. The villains are mere caricatures of Pure Evil, without even the slightest bit of humanity to make them interesting or compelling.

And then there are the Plot Holes. Seriously HUGE plot holes. (WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS COMING)  A couple of these leap to mind: WHY did they continue to feed the trapped cops? HOW did they feed a city the size of Gotham for MONTHS while it was under siege? If anarchy was the rule of the land, WHERE were the mobs, the oppressed masses begging for said food? And WHERE were the piles of garbage and wrecked cars/broken store fronts you know would appear all over the city?? How did Commissioner Gordon go from being flat on his back and so weak he can hardly get out of bed, turn into a leaping, running, jumping onto trucks, all better now WITHOUT a hospital/doctors?  How about Bruce, who “shouldn’t go para-skiing” even BEFORE getting beaten down so thoroughly, manage to heal up so very nicely and perfectly while in the avowed “worst prison in the world” with some push-ups and a rope? And just HOW did Bruce make his way across the world to land in front of Selena in Gotham when he was flat broke and Alfred-less? Oh, and in WHAT insane universe is Alfred going to leave Bruce??? No way.  I do not believe it.

In addition, the use of foreshadowing was so blatantly obvious that the movie should have been named The Dark Cliché Rises.  Alfred’s little fantasy. The introduction of the young, fresh-faced, and very smart cop with mad skills (I guessed that one not even a third of the way through the movie).  A declaration that someone was not going to march down the street in his dress uniform. Talk of the autopilot not working. The gathering of all the serious bat-gadgets into one place…

The assumed villain LOOKED bad enough, especially in the beginning (bad guys always seem to kill off their henchmen to make a point), but over-exposure and uninteresting camera angles deadened his presence to simply a guy in a mask. A really big guy in a weird cross between a scuba regulator and a spider leg mask, but still, just a guy.  And that voice… where is James Earl Jones when you need him??  He was mostly unintelligible and eventually started to sound really whiney.  He started out big, and ended small.  Weird choice.

Character holes:

1.       Way too little with Morgan Freeman (Fox)… he was barely in the movie at all, usually alone, and he seemed to be constantly getting caught with his pants down.  He was portrayed in earlier films as much smarter than that.

2.       Scarecrow as Judge. Pretty cool – that actor has serious stage PRESENCE, but shouldn’t the film have been LITTERED with such nods to previously locked up villains? If not, then why him? It felt like there should have been a little bit more back story; maybe his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.

3.       Foley (Modine). He was totally unlikable; I didn’t care about him at all. His defection/hiding was probably meant to seem like a cowardly betrayal of his badge and oath, so that his return to “march down the street in his dress uniform” would feel like redemption of character… but it didn’t. It just felt contrived.

And the bus full of orphaned kids. *rolls eyes* Really? Sticking this in was an obvious attempt as garnering sympathy and a sense of urgency, but instead came off as, well, an obvious attempt at garnering sympathy. It might have been better if they had actually made it off the bridge, but leaving them there while the cops on the other side shot at Blake was simply heartless. The Terrorists won, and individual ethics or heroism were effectively and completely squelched. Yay team.

I will not go into the other obvious political themes of Capitalism=BAD, Rich=GREEDY, when without the capitalistic infrastructure, the city was supposedly reduced to an extreme of anarchistic mob rule, with only the bad guys prevailing. Giving the city back to the people, indeed. 

Having the villain “tell” the story of why all this was happening at the very end was simply lazy filmmaking/storytelling. Another cliché: bad guys always take time before putting the final piece of their evil plot to Destroy the City into action to sit down with the good guys and explain their motivations, giving the hero more time to stop it. You’d think the bad guys would read the comic books or watch their own movies and would therefore know better.  Just push the button already.

The real villain reveal was the only surprise for me in the movie. In as much as I thought the kid in the hole did not really fit the presumed profile, I did not make that leap.

Things I liked:

I really liked Anne Hathaway’s Selena/The Cat. She was completely believable and a wonderfully sympathetic character, full of layers, pathos, fear and confidence. And I Loved THE night vision glasses that flipped up on her head and looked like cat ears. That was very clever and believably done, no Halloween costume for the Cat, but something that was based on “reality”. Well done. Although, looking at her sloppily applied and bleeding lipstick was disconcerting. Hey Make-Up Artist, they sell lip liner at Walgreens for less than five bucks.

Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon was, as ever, very likeable and believable. I do not blame the ridiculous things his character had to do on him; that is all on the script and direction.

Joseph Gordon-Levit’s fresh-faced and eager Blake was nicely done, a voice of bewildered dissention in a world gone mad, and from his very first scene in a background full of cops, an obvious player in the movie.

Michael Cain (Alfred) dominated his every scene in a way that only an exceptionally seasoned and skilled actor can, and managed to evoke very nearly the only real emotion in the entire film. Too bad he was dropped out of the movie halfway through. Still didn’t like that at all.

There were some very cool scenes (trapped in an alley… HAH!!), and the effects were excellent, although the movie in general felt empty and over-produced.  Am I the only one who longs for the classic sleek and elegant SIMPLICITY of Batman’s “cool toys”? 

The Dark Knight Rises could have used a lot more humanity and humor to break up the near unrelenting break-neck pace.  I just ended up with a bit of a headache and a desire to leave the theater the instant the credits began to roll, which if you know me at all, I NEVER do. Everyone else in the half filled theater seemed to be of the same mind, because there was no applause, no exciting chattering, no waiting to see if there were any little surprises buried in the credits; everyone in the theater just got up and left.

My rating: 5 out of 10

Just Musing,

Susan

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Movie Review (Some Spoilers):

I was mildly interested in seeing this reboot of the Spiderman franchise - not wanting to get my hopes up too much - after loving the first Tobey McGuire foray (the second one a little less so and not liking part III much at all), I was curious to see how a new director would handle the story… would he build on the old familiar movie story, follow the comics closely, or take it in a whole other direction? Or would he do a bit of a mash up?

There were a few things I really enjoyed about this reboot: I loved the presence of a backstory about Peter’s parents, the action/web-slinging was excellently rendered, and the 3D, while lightly intrusive at times, seemed to enhance the dizzying effects of swinging through the streets of New York. Casting Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben was an interesting choice, but Sally Field as Aunt May… well. After getting over the shock that Aunt May wasn’t white-haired, I adored Field’s portrayal of Aunt May; sassy, strong, and certainly NOT the sweet little old slightly daft lady who was completely lost after the death of Uncle Ben. Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey was, as ever, everything I would have wanted to be when I was her age, pretty, fashionable, very smart, and extremely brave… I mean, really, would YOU go after a %^$*# monster with a high school trophy??? Hmm. Seems like a lot of smart women are showing up in movies these days. But I digress…

The biggest hole – and there were many – in this film was the lack of The Daily Bugle and Editor in Chief Jonah Jameson. To me, in the comics and in the previous movies, Jameson was the bridge between the audience and Spider-man, looking at this guy who just shows up suddenly and does all these weird things, like flying through the city going after blond muggers and messing up the cop’s sting operations. He was also a mirror on the ridiculous, allowing us to suspend our disbelief with incredibly biased and wrong headlines that make us all want to jump up and defend the guy who really just wants to be a hero, even if he is a bit of a show-off. Without that mirror-device, we are left to just follow Peter Parker, who seems to be in just about every single scene, ad infinitum… Sometimes too much of a good thing is just… too much.

The Creature was pretty creepy, but I didn’t get a full on baddie vibe from him, even when he was fully… who he turned into. Other than the scene on the bridge, he never really put anyone the audience cared about in peril. The fact that he wanted to “share” his discovery with the whole city, rather than use his new-found power to rule, watered down his menace. This is no isrespect to the actor, Rhys Ifans, who I like very much; it is the fault of the script. I have seen many a nuanced bad guy who is humanized, funny, even, and you even LIKE them a little, but they are STILL bad to the core and they Must Be Stopped At All Costs.

Without much humor to break up the story, without the Daily Bugle and the ever irascible Jameson, and without a bad guy who was REALLY REALLY bad (he truly wanted to HELP EVERYone, really he did!), the movie could not make it to the next level. I hope in the next movie (because of course there will be a next movie) uses a better script with a better story. Because without the story and the use of all of the disparate elements that make the it work, we in the audience are left trying frantically to fill in the blanks with what we already know about the character in between munches of popcorn.

And, personally, I don’t want to work that hard in a movie theater. I want to be swept up in a story that takes me somewhere.

Oh, and Stan Lee’s cameo… funnnnny! And, probably the most fun scene in the movie. Makes you want to buy a pair of those …!

This movie could have used more of those moments.

My rating: 6.5 out of 10.

Just Musing,
Susan

Mother's Day 2012

Being a daughter and a mother puts me right smack in the middle of a generational triangle of life: being created and living and then creating life.

It is a uniquely beautiful process, being helped growing up and then, using all the lessons imparted by my own mother and grandmother and those that I learned just by living (mostly that we all we can do is our very best) helping someone else grow into adulthood. The bumps and bruises, the joys, the sleeplessness and worry, the regrets and the pride, the giggles and the anger, the tears of disappointment and the feeling of being overwhelmed and the feeling of overwhelming love, most held softly behind a smile that simply says, “I love you” no matter what we are actually thinking…

This is the legacy I have inherited from my own mother (Hi Mom!) and hope that I have imparted on my own children (Dawn, Adam, Mallory and James, Chris and Michael), and opefully, some part of my lessons will be handed down to my children’s children.

I love you, Mom. Your courage and humor through some crazy times held us all together and taught me with love, we can, and will, survive.

And to my children, there are no words to express the joy I feel at what wonderful adults you have become, and what wistfulness I feel at how quickly time has passed and how hard I hope that you have forgiven me my mistakes, and remember that through it all, I have loved you more than you will ever know. And for those not quite flown, I am confident that you will be okay, that you will figure it all out and will go on to make good lives for yourselves.

And that is all a parent really wants.

Just Musing,
Susan

Growing Up Was Not Everything I Thought it Would Be

Time was that I knew everything. I knew what I was going to be when I grew up, I knew all about my future husband and perfect kids and where I was going to live, I even knew what kind of car I was going to drive.

Then LIFE happened. Almost everything I thought I was going to be, everything I thought my life was going to be, has turned out so very differently than my childhood self could have possibly imagined.

It is not always a bad thing, to find that some adjustments have to be made along the way. The big disappointments, things that left me bleeding and broken, eventually healed and have made me stronger. And the little things, the tiny little regrets that creep up and chop at the soul little by little over the years, those are are harder to get over…

What can you do? I guess there is no real answer, just the realization that all you can do it take it day by day and know that things will eventually work out.

Just Musing,
Susan

Do Women have the Right to Be Themselves?

Aside from the obvious, there are some extreme differences in the way that men and women view the world - and each other - in today's society.

Take the issue of protection of a weaker creature vs. and adult’s right to self-determination.

Being female, I can only relate what I have observed in my more than half century on the planet, but it would seem that many men see women as the weaker sex, and must thus be protected. This protective stance no doubt is instinctual and harkens back to when dangers lurked around every corner and the female and any children were extremely vulnerable to animal, element and even enemy attack.

Throughout history, and up until fairly recently, rigid roles of protector and nurturer were, by evolutionary standards, necessary to the survival of the species.

In modern times, the roles of men and women are not so markedly defined, and the advent of excellent shelter and fortifications further protects the Family Unit. In addition, women in the work force also contribute to financial stability, sometimes even surpassing the male contribution. This has necessitated a paradigm shift in the way that gender roles are perceived and fulfilled.

The concepts of Equality and Partnership in marriage and families is being personally worked out every day in homes throughout Western society. Some families use the traditional roles in home and work, although nowadays most major decisions are made jointly rather than assigning all financial and total managerial control to one party in the relationship. Most families work out their own dynamics based on the needs of the family, ability and financial considerations.

Other societies are also experiencing some of these changes, but their timelines and culture are creating their own challenges to these revolutionary concepts.

The world is still a dangerous place, and many men still feel a great need to protect their spouses and children from anything bad that might happen.

This is a fine and even praiseworthy sentiment. However, when that protective stance spills over from basic bodily protection into a conviction that a person should have or has control of another adult's movements, and either directly or indirectly impedes the ability to make decisions about their own life, the dynamic changes from the presumptive equal partnership to that of a parent/child.

This does not include the agreed upon tasks that are mutually agreed to be split, such as grocery shopping, doing the bills/finances, laundry, cooking, childcare, house and yard work, etc. These types of tasks are no longer required to be split along gender roles. Most people figure out who does each of them best and just agree to take specific responsibilities.

But if one person has to ask permission or get approval to run every aspect of his/her life, someone is being caged.

And a cage, even a really pretty one, is still a cage.

It has happened several times in my life that a partner has felt that they had the right to dictate my movements, my thoughts, my activities, my education, my hobbies, even the way I voted. It became obvious over time that these individuals not only did not respect me as a fully grown human adult, but also did not respect me as an intelligent, capable individual. Just the fact that I might make a decision that they did not approve of was enough to set off alarm bells and slam down the bars of the cage.

Protect me? No. You do not respect me. Make sure I am safe? You do not respect my ability to make my own decisions. You want to know where I am every second of the day? Stop stalking me. I reserve the right to take an aimless drive or stop by a coffee shop or feed the ducks at a park without having to ask permission, just as you do.

There have been times when my requests to know when my partner was going to be home (mostly having to do with arranging for dinner, etc.) have been ignored, rebuffed and belittled.

And yet, that same person would stay out very late and come home so inebriated that I feared for his and that of other drivers on the road's safety.

Were the shoe on the other foot, I would be getting phone calls every five minutes, "Where are you? When are you coming home?" even when I have already given answers not 20 minutes before.

It may well be that I overreact to certain situations because my past experiences have led me to believe that someone who tells me what to do is going to get progressively worse and slide into yet another ultra-controlling person who ends up despising me as their respect is worn away by their own controlling actions.

All I ask, and what most women ask, is to be treated with respect as an adult.

Just Musing,

Susan

THE AVENGERS Movie review

(spoilers)

While waiting in line outside the Cinemark 22 on Friday night, I was struck by the diversity of the crowd. All races, all ages, men women, kids, teens, burly types, skinny guys with glasses, grandparents, straight-from-work dressed, stereotypical fanboys, baggy pants with chains hanging out of their pockets… All smiling and waiting, the atmosphere was all giddy anticipation covered with a veneer of “I’m cool”.

Let us begin.

Comic Book movies should ALWAYS be written and directed by people who love comic books. Joss Whedon’s genuine love for the genre comes through in every frame of this blockbuster. There is something for everybody; it is an over the top, energetic thrill-ride, funny and totally fun movie. Rather than treating the characters with deadly seriousness or turning them into jokes in tights, his respect for the disparate backstories as already told in the preceding movies (Ironman, Thor, and both Hulk attempts), shows though and he somehow manages to bring them together in a totally believable and yet still 100% comic-book way.

He also understands that aside from the absolutely amazing (WOW!!!!) special effects, this is still a character story at heart.

In a less complex director’s hands, you could just have The Avengers all be perfectly reasonable and noble, and have Fury send out lovely engraved but cryptic invitations (which they would all politely accept), sit them all down around a round table and explain that Something Big and Bad is out there and they must, virtuously and selflessly, sacrifice their lives to the Common Good. And they would of course, being heroes, immediately acknowledge their moral Duty and, already being suited up in their cute costumes with capes and leather and tights and armor, begin the Battle for Earth without even stopping for lunch. Of course they win. Heroic Music swells and the credit roll.

That’s the way someone who doesn’t really understand the genre may have approached the film.

Not Joss. Our Heroes come from all over the place and only one is already on board with the Avenger Initiative. The rest have to be… persuaded. So how do you get all these guys in the same room and playing nicely on the same side when one had been brain-hijacked, one doesn’t believe the cover story, one doesn’t even want to be there, one is certain this is simply a personal fight, one has nothing left to lose, and one super-spy-intelligence gatherer is being pulled into an epic war with superior firepower?

Do they all just suit up because Nick Fury tells them to in a deeply rousing and inspiring speech? Nope. They walk away with varying degrees of disbelief and I-Have-My-Own-Problems attitudes and snipe and snarl at each other, bicker and fight like a bunch of siblings in the middle of a Testosterone War (apologies to Black Widow).

And when Superheroes fight... Well. Let’s just say things get broken up a bit. They only begin to work together when everything is falling (literally) apart. I guess falling to earth in a broken…. (insert major spoiler here… nah, not gonna do it!)… will do that to a team. Of course they weren’t ALL on board the *********, but they all did literally succumb to gravity in their own way. Everyone gets knocked on the head a bit, shakes it off and realized they had better Do Something.

Working in pairs at first, then cross teaming, they finally get to the point where Captain America is calling the shots with all the assurance of a broken military general who is finally in his element and completely understands his troops. Only then are they The Avengers.

But they still annoy each other, maybe just a little.

Within the scope of the main Save the World from a Terrible Menace plot, there are smaller interwoven stories, many character reveals, and of course, as this is a Joss Whedon project, completely believable and absolutely hilarious humor sprinkled throughout.

The Big Bad, Loki, is as complex as any other character, and is much more menacing than in the Thor movie; less, dare I say, comic book two dimensional. In Loki’s determined and demented quest to be loved, feared and revered, even he understands on some level that he is manipulating forces that he cannot completely control, but he continues to play his part in the game with a grim determination and certain maniacal glee at the thought of beating his step-brother down. Who cares about the puny humans; they are ants, he is the boot.

There is a lot of fighting, amazingly realistic effects, spectacular settings and many surprises. A few questions are answered and some more are raised. My biggest question has to do with the Hulk, if the end is true, then why the first time?? Hmmmm. I have a theory, but will see the movie again tomorrow to see if it bears out.

Quibbles were few and were drowned out by the completely immersive FUN of the overall experience. And as we learned from the other Marvel movies, stay until the very end of the credits. Something happens, and then later, a small, but funny scene. Just stay. And see if you can count just how many special effects companies were involved!

I saw it in a regular 3D (IMax was sold out… *pouts*) in a nearly sold out theater, and suggest that you see it in 3D, too. I can’t believe that Joss has never filmed in 3D before, it was handled MASTERFULLY.

My rating: 9.9999999 out of 10

Just Musing,
Susan