Friday, June 3, 2022.
The Last Descent starring Chadwick Hopson, Alexis Johnson, Landon Henneman, Jyllian Petrie and Jacob Omer screenplay by Isaac Halasima directed by Isaac Halasima Rating: ◊◊◊◊◊ A 2016 biographical survival drama based on the true story of John Edward Jones (1983 – 2009) who died in the Nutty Putty Cave in Utah, USA during a Thanksgiving holiday spelunking expedition with his brother. I’d never heard of the Nutty Putty Cave. It sounds like a made-up thing to me, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. It’s a real thing, after all - a notoriously narrow and twisting cave system. The deeper spelunkers go into it, the more humid it gets, and the rock walls begin to soften like clay. Jones took a wrong turn and got stuck head-down in a passage too narrow to escape. After several hours of failed rescue attempts, he died of a heart attack. His body could not be recovered, so the cave was closed with an explosion, and a commemorative plaque marks the site today. I learned about the story and the film after watching a random Youtube video of someone visiting the site. It reminded me of the 2007 movie Into the Wild (directed by Sean Penn), which portrayed the disastrous 1992 misadventure of idealist Chris McCandless (1968 - 1992) who sought virtue by living unvarnished in the Alaska wilderness. I hated it. I am attracted to intelligence, and stupidity - especially deliberate, wilful, wanton stupidity - disgusts and repels me. I don’t like naivete and hubris, either. What is it with young men who think Nature is cool and wonderful, and that adventure-seeking in Nature is a good idea. Important note: everything in Nature wants to kill you. And, it can. It doesn’t matter what you believe about Mankind’s proper place and behaviour in the natural scheme of things; it doesn’t matter how fit you are and how much adventurous experience you have. Nature is waiting to annihilate you. The kind of selfish hubris demonstrated by Chris McCandless in 1992 and by John Edwards in 2009 earns them Darwin Awards. They might have been sweet fellows personally. But removing themselves from our gene pool might also have been their greatest achievements. Or not. Thursday, March 31, 2022.
Moonfall starring Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Michael Peña, Charlie Plummer, Kellly Yu and Donald Sutherland written by Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen directed by Roland Emmerich Rating: ◊◊◊◊◊ A science fiction disaster movie following two former astronauts - Jocinda Fowler and Brian Harper (Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson) - alongside conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (John Bradley) - who “megastructure” constructed by aliens, and powered by a captured white dwarf star at its core. We begin when astronauts Fowler and Harper are in orbit with the space shuttle, repairing a satellite. Then Harper witnesses a mysterious black swarm attacking the space shuttle. Fowler is knocked unconscious and doesn’t witness what Harper sees. After successfully landing the shuttle on earth, NASA blames human error by Harper for the incident. Fowler remains with NASA while Harper becomes embittered in exile. Ten years later, the moon mysteriously leaves its orbit causing cataclysmic catastrophes on earth. The situation is first detected by conspiracy theorist Houseman, whom nobody believes, of course. To make a long story short, Fowler, Harper and Houseman are sent to the moon. It’s discovered that swarms of intelligent nanotechnology are draining energy from the captured white dwarf inside the moon, thereby causing it to veer off its orbital path. They have to lure the nano swarm away from the moon to be destroyed, allowing the moon to return to its proper orbit. There is sufficient talent in this movie to make it great. But instead, it was an atrocious load of boring rubbish! Mostly bad due to bad writing, I think. Too many writers on this project! The effects were okay, and Emmerich is a very reputable director. Filmed in Montreal, Canada, with a large budget, it underperformed at the box office and for good reasons. 1) it was released during a global infectious disease pandemic, and 2) it’s crap! The threat of out-of-control computers, Artificial Intelligence and nanotechnology are a familiar plot. I just wish it wasn’t such an obvious and transparent reflection of contemporary pop-culture fascination and phobia. The evils/dangers of technology thing is a fetish. I was very interested to see brand placement in the film - Kaspersky anti-virus computer software. I recognized it because I have used Kaspersky in the past. I figured a lot of people wouldn’t see it and recognize it, so I felt quite proud of myself. Saturday, March 19, 2022.
William Hurt On Sunday, March 13th, American actor William Hurt died of prostate cancer, aged 71. Long ago I sometimes confused him with the English actor John Hurt (1940 - 2017), but I eventually figured them out. I liked William Hurt because he had a soft voice and he reminded me of a high school English teacher. Or, possibly a biology teacher. The sort of English teacher who would ambitiously direct junior high schoolers in a Bertolt Brecht play. He also looked very much like a career foreign English teacher in Japan. If someone asked me, “What does a foreign English teacher in Japan look like?,” I would say, “William Hurt.” I first saw Hurt in the 1983 Lawrence Kasdan film “The Big Chill,” co-starring Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, Tom Berenger, Kevin Kline, Meg Tilly, and JoBeth Williams. Kevin Costner was supposed to be in “The Big Chill,” but all his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. The only glimpse we get of Costner is his wrist in a coffin. He was the film's protagonist, the suicide whose death drew all his close college friends together again for a cathartic reunion. The movie also introduced me to Creedence Clearwater Revival, whose cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Heard It Through the Grapevine” is featured in the film. I prefer the CCR version over the original because of its heavier, throbbing bass line. Plus, I much prefer the sound of John Fogerty’s voice over Marvin Gaye’s. Hurt was quietly, confidently cool. Not the too-cool-for-school type of youthful swagger of the young Harrison Ford (currently aged 79), but a gentler, everyman kind of cool - like a cool high school English teacher. Or, possibly a biology teacher. Monday, January 31, 2022.
Being the Ricardos starring Nicole Kidman, Janier Bardem, J.K. Simmons, Nina Arianda, Tony Hale, Alia Shawkat, Jake Lacy and Clark Gregg written and directed by Aaron Sorkin Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦ This is a comedy-drama-biopic about legendary television comedienne Lucille Ball (1911 - 1989). Nicole Kidman plays Ball in this film spanning a week at the “I Love Lucy” TV show set in Los Angeles, where she and her husband Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) fight to incorporate Ball’s pregnancy into the show, fend off accusations the Ball is a communist, and arrive at a fateful point in their marriage (Arnaz’s extra-marital womanizing). That’s a lot going on. It seems that a feature length movie could be made out of any one of those things. The “I Love Lucy” (starring Ball and Arnaz, plus VivianVance and William Frawley) show ran from 1951 to 1957. But since then, it has never left the air as it is continually re-run somewhere in the world. My first exposure to Lucille Ball came in the early 1970s through the TV show Here’s Lucy (1968 – 1974), which my mother watched. I never liked Lucille Ball very much. First, her comedy was kind of dated by the time I saw it. Second, I didn’t think Ball was very good-looking and pleasant to look at. Third, Ball was always playing some kind of stupid dingbat character. Pretending to be a stupid dingbat seems to be what she excelled at, but I think it’s a weak basis for the fantastic reputation she has as an entertainer and entertainment businesswoman. Of course, the Lucy character was a deliberate, broad exaggeration of herself in which she purposefully spoke with an artificially high-pitched voice. I get that. But her performances always annoyed me. And, the constant repetition of her name annoyed me even more. 1. I Love Lucy 2. The Lucy Show 3. Here’s Lucy 4. Life With Lucy Even today, I’m sick of hearing her name. For God’s sake give this “Lucy” business a rest! So, I feel torn about the movie. I only moderately liked it, but I thought it was very well done, so as a film it gets full marks. Pretending to be a stupid dingbat seems to be what Ball excelled at, but I think it’s a weak basis for the fantastic reputation she has. Saturday, January 1, 2022.
Don’t Look Up starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi, Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey, Cate Blanchett and Meryl Streep screenplay by Adam McKay directed by Adam McKay Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦ I hated this movie. But I watched the whole thing and give it full marks because it was so good, so clever, and so well done. Even though I hated it. Movies love to menace Earth. It’s human nature. In some of the most plausible doomsday films - Meteor (1979), Deep Impact (1998), and Armageddon (1998) - a big space rock threatens annihilation. Usually, someone finally comes to the rescue. Before the final destruction of the Earth, Don’t Look Up rockets a small group of super-rich survivalists to colonize another planet, which is pretty much what Elon Musk has talked about with his company Space X. Honestly, humanity doesn’t seem much interested in saving the Earth, not to mention itself. So, director Scott McKay has made this angry, anguished comedy freak-out about how we’re blowing it. Don’t Look Up pits a collection of serious scientists against a buffoonish collection of science-denying politicians, capitalists and infotainment stars who live by their polling numbers, their social media following, the Dow Jones, market share and the quarterly profit projections. I guess it’s supposed to be a parody of American society today, like Wag the Dog (1997) or something, but it feels less like parody and more like accurate reflection, which is what made me hate it. Meryl Streep plays a mostly bored American President, Janie Orlean, who uses the crisis to divert attention from a pending mid-term election her party is likely to lose, and also attention from her porn-star boyfriend whom she is attempting to appoint to the Supreme Court. Her character makes me cringe. Donald Trump inspired her portrayal of the character, as you will see. (After he speech at the Golden Globes Awards in January 2017, Trump tweeted about Streep, “one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood.”) University of Michigan astronomers come to the Oval Office with a prognosis of 6-months to the Extinction Level Event threatened by a newly-discovered comet. The math is solid. The scientists aren’t wrong. But the science is politicized, the way it is in the U.S. today. Many of the President’s base even deny the existence of a comet, and reframe it as a conspiracy. No sense of urgency emanates from the White House, and the scientists become increasingly frenetic as the inevitability of the disaster approaches. Eventually, though, when the approaching rock becomes visible in the sky, both day and night, the scientists tell people just to look up to realize the truth and gravity of the situation. But in a truly Trump-like response, President Orlean urges her supporters “Don’t Look Up!” at large, deranged Trump-like rallies. Strangely, I didn’t recognize Cate Blanchet. I knew she was in the film and I was watching for her. But by the time I realized that I’d been watching her for half an hour, I was surprised. I enjoyed Mark Rylance. His character was creepy (I think Mark Rylance is creepy, too), but he pulled it off beautifully. The last time I saw him was when he played real-life Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in the 2015 Tom Hanks movie Bridge of Spies. The most reprehensible character in the film is Chief of Staff Jason Orlean, the President’s son, played by Jonah Hill. He’s as bad as Donald Trump’s sons. There are three types of American people: the working class; the cool rich; and, them. Tuesday, August 31, 2021.
The Irishman starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel screenplay by Steven Zaillian directed by Martin Scorsese Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦ Also called “I Heard You Paint Houses” and based on the book by Charles Brandt (Steerforth Press, 2004). “I hear you paint houses” is a euphemism for someone who is a professional hitman. On first impression, you might think this is another Scorsese mafia movie. It’s got all the usual tough-guy actors. Instead, it is a movie about the disappearance of American labor leader Jimmy Hoffa - and, incidentally, the mafia plays into theories behind his unsolved disappearance in 1975. This film is only the second time I’ve seen Robert De Niro and Al Pacino sharing screen time with each other in a film, after Heat (1995, directed by Michael Mann). Joe Pesci came out of semi-retirement in order to work with Scorsese one more time. Apparently, it was a monumental, almost nightmarish task to get all the principal actors lined up. So, the film was stuck in development for a very long time. The story of the mob’s association with Jimmy Hoffa is told in retrospect by Frank Sheeran (De Niro), an Irish-American hitman for the mob. Sheeran began his mob work in the 1950s. While driving union delivery trucks he happens to meet Russsell Bufalino (Pesci), head of a Pennsylvania crime family. Because the story is told in a series of flashbacks, Scorsese had a decision to make about his cast: he could hire younger, look-alike actors; he could reverse-age his cast with computer graphics; or, he could use a hell of a lot of make-up. It looks like he went with curtain number three. It looked a little weird to me at first, but it was okay. I got used to it, and De Niro’s, Pesci’s and Pacino’s appearance was believable. The main characters are all real historical figures. Frank begins selling shipments from his truck to a local Philadelphia mobster. Soon, he does special work for Bufalino, which included killing people. Through these crime connections, Frank is introduced to Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters Union. It’s long been thought that Hoffa was killed by the mafia. The connection is explained in The Irishman like this: the mafia wanted to set up legitimate casinos in Las Vegas. Building hotels and casinos cost a lot of money, which banks would not lend them. So, the Mafia approached Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters’ Union, because the union had billions of dollars in its retirement fund. That’s billions of dollars controlled by Hoffa, who decided to lend the money. That created a financial link between organized crime and organized labor which ignited endless federal government investigations. By 1975, Hoffa wanted the money repaid. Naturally, the mafia didn’t want to repay it. But the alternative to repaying the money was to hand control of the Las Vegas hotels and casinos over to the Teamsters, which the mafia wouldn’t allow. So, Hoffa had to disappear. Hoffa served time in prison for jury tampering in an early-1960s case. He was paroled and the conditions of his parole forbade him from union activities. Hoffa disagreed with those conditions, and although barred from his old position as head of the Teamsters, he began to reassert his influence, thereby threatening to split the union. He remained very popular among the rank-and-file. So, there was a lot going on. It’s 209-minutes long, so be prepared for a long sit-down. Have drinks and snacks ready. Tuesday, August 31, 2021.
The Interview starring James Franco, Seth Rogan, Diana Bang, Lizzy Caplan and Randall Park screenplay by Dan Sterling directed by Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg Rating: ◊◊◊◊◊ This movie has an interesting history that makes it worth watching, even though I think it’s mostly crap. The history is this: released in 2014, this film about a fictitious American TV show’s interview with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. It upset the North Koreans so much that they seemed ready to start a war over it! North Korea is a silly, little, weak, irrelevant country. But it has nuclear weapons. So with its arsenal it relies on pompous posturing and plethoric and bombastic rhetoric to get its way - basically throwing a childish tantrum, which it does regularly. In 2014, North Korea was in the midst of a program of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests - missiles that could/can reach the U.S. Pacific coast. Hence, there was a lot of tension in those days. Japan was particularly upset because the North Koreans were firing ballistic missiles into the Pacific Ocean directly over Japan!! Then along came these American comedy writers and actors to mock North Korea and the whole nuclear missile business, because that’s what American comedians do - they mock the powerful. Mocking the powerful and somewhat deflating them is what American audiences want. It’s the American way. But it’s not the North Korean way. The controversy was so bad that the film’s initial release was postponed to avoid further antagonizing the North. James Franco plays Dave Skylark, host of an entertainment interview/talk show, Skylark Tonight. Seth Rogan is his producer, Aaron Rapaport. Aaron is troubled that his career is merely a silly talk show and not the heady peak of network news broadcasting. He is planning to leave the show when a chance to do serious journalism suddenly falls in his lap. In the midst of a tense international situation with North Korea Aaron learns that Skylark Tonight is actually one of the Dear Leader Kim’s favorite shows. (In his youth, Kim Jong-un was educated at private schools in Switzerland, so he is really quite familiar with the West, and is a big NBA fan.) Dave and Aaron hatch the idea of interviewing Kim. But how to contact the North Korean government to set it up? North Korea and the U.S. have no official diplomatic relations. A tentative inquiry is made through the North Korean Olympic Committee office, and bingo!! Aaron’s telephone message is answered and a meeting with Kim is set up in Pyongyang. That’s when Dave and Aaron are approached by the CIA with a plan to assassinate Kim with poison - slow-acting poison that can be delivered by handshake, through his skin. First, the two are terrified. Then they vacillate: first, they’re with the plan; then they meet Kim and they’re not with the plan. Then Aaron is with the plan but Dave is against it. It goes back and forth like this. Kim tries to manipulate Dave, because an interview like this on an American TV show is a great propaganda opportunity. It’s easy to manipulate Dave, because he’s an idiot. Not your regular run-of-the-mill idiot, but a prize-winning moron! But Dave soon realizes he’s been manipulated. He resents it and decides to go through with the plan. But the poison plan is no good, because they wasted the equipment supplied by the CIA. So, the two make up their own plan off the cuff with the help of a sexy female dissident. There’s a lot of shooting and caper-like folly. The story is a capricious escapade. Kim is eventually killed, but then Dave and Aaron still have to escape the country. Killing Kim does not neutralize the North’s threat, however. It only destabilizes a nuclear power. This sort of short-sighted planning is typically American, and so my favorite lines from the film are these: “How many times can America make the same mistake?” “As many as it takes.” These days, it seems like America tries to conduct its wars as if they were movies. Then they’re upset when their wars fail to resolve themselves like their war movies regularly do. Reality is not a movie, and military operations never go exactly to plan. I didn’t like the film because it overflows with adolescent humor. That kind of humor is supposed to tell us what kind of people Dave and Aaron are. In addition, Seth Rogan is not my favorite guy - almost as annoying as Seth McFarlane! The two Seths are both a couple of jacktwits. But I could be wrong. Sunday, August 1, 2021.
Jungle Cruise starring Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Edgar Ramirez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons and Paul Giamatti screenplay by Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa directed by Jaume Collet-Serra Rating: ♦♦♦◊◊ I wanted to watch this 2021 Disney movie because when I saw a trailer for it (in Japanese) I thought it looked like a re-make of the 1951 Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn classic The African Queen. (That’s a movie I’d like to see re-made, if it’s done well.) Well, it wasn’t that. It was a movie version of the 1955 Disneyland ride of the same name, just like how the 2003 movie Pirates of the Caribbean was based on Disney’s 1965 ride of that name. I didn’t realize that at first. I knew it was familiar, and I kept trying to think what it reminded me of: a mix of Indiana Jones (Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981) and Rick O’Connell (The Mummy, 1999). But soon the ridiculous amount of fast-paced action opened my eyes. It was fun, but quickly got sillier and sillier. I’ve never like Disneyland, and I tired of Pirates of the Caribbean long ago. Set in 1916, Emily Blunt plays Dr. Lily Houghton who sets off to the Amazon jungle with her brother hunting a legendary tree whose flowers can cure all disease and injury - a tree which is almost impossible to find, and whose flowers must be harvested only at a particular time. The Hougton’s are led upriver by Captain Frank (Dwayne Johnson), a quirky, pun-spewing river guide. But they are being pursued by a German prince (Jesse Plemons) in a submarine who also seeks the flower for Imperial Germany’s war effort. Captain Frank’s seemingly endless store of corny one-liners were practically the best thing about this film. “Know this about the jungle: everything you see wants to kill you (and can).” |
AuthorI am a permanent foreign resident in Japan. I have no plan. I don't know what I'm doing. Archives
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