Star Wars Watch: Star Wars - The Force Awakens (2015) round 4

I finally busted out my disk of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) (or, Star Wars VII as the kids are calling it).

I'm pleased it held up so well upon a fourth viewing and a non-theatrical viewing at that, where distractions abound and I'm more likely to lean back and take a more critical view of a movie.  And, now knowing the plot reflects many milestone elements of Episode IV, all of that really falls into the background and I can just enjoy what the actors are doing, the sets, the vehicles, and all that stuff you get to like about a movie you watch over and over like Star Wars or Star Trek or, in my case, Captain America or the Superman movies.  

It's also funny to see how I relate to the new characters in comparison to the Episode IV - VI characters I grew up with.  My feelings regarding Rey and Finn are oddly... paternalistic.  My "empathy" characters, the ones I understand or relate more to at this point in my life are still Han, Leia, Chewie and Luke.

I'm incredibly impressed with the talent of John Boyega and Daisy Ridley and love the characters created by the actors and behind-the-lens crew.  These are fun characters to follow, not an obligation because that's who the camera is pointed at in a movie called "Star Wars".

Certainly, one can imagine Lawrence Kasdan and his contemporaries involved know a bit more about kids, failed marriages, etc...  now than they did 30 years ago.  And, at its heart, Star Wars is a family melodrama about a very messed up clan.  So there's quite a bit for the old favorites.

But I watch Finn and Rey discovering the Millennium Falcon and even finding each other not with skepticism, but excitement at the passing of torches, of new characters I can enjoy, if not identify with (or, wish to be).  Alas, my heart doesn't go pitter-patter for a girl young enough to be my daughter, but still for Princess Leia stepping off that Resistance command ship.  But, man, watching Finn has all the hallmarks of how I saw myself faking it as a younger me.  "We'll use the force!"

And, yes, I still take a little kid's delight in all the spaceship battles, whether its the amazing "graveyard" sequence with the Falcon on Jakku or a squadron of X-Wings coming in low over a lake on Takodana or storming Starkiller Base, and watch lightsaber battle with popped eyes, especially among rookies taking up the only fight that matters.

Here's to Star Wars being back and something I care about all over again.

Deadpool Watch: Deadpool (2016)

This movie came out some time ago and everyone else has already seen it.  So, what to say?

I guess I really, really can't believe this movie got made at all.  It's kind of a shock to know Fox was willing to go this bananas not just with a superhero movie, but a feature film in general.  The past few years, really since Guardians of the Galaxy was a hit, I've been feeling pretty good about the uptick in exploring diversity of content under the Marvel and DC banners.  Part of why I've not bought the idea of "superhero fatigue" is, well, absolutely gigantic box office when most of these movies arrive, but because all of us longtime comics readers know that the comics themselves are no two alike, on a good day.  There's a reason DC and Marvel each own stables of thousands of characters and it's not just because the artists like drawing different suits.

We're now well past the point of me going to see "superhero" movies about characters I've never really read, and seeing pics of Bumbershoot Scratchnsniff dressed up as Dr. Strange online this weekend will get me right back to the theater to check out that dude.

To be honest, I've always thought of Deadpool from the comics as one of those things that people tell me is funny, but when I look at it, it felt like a collection of tired jokes Gen-X'ers told each other (Ha!  Bea Arthur!  HA!), and some lightweight racism (the word is "chimichanga"!  Ha ha ha!  Sigh.) increasingly mixed in with internet memes and pop culture references.  It was like a less surreal Ambush Bug.*  I got that some folks liked it, and that's great!  It's terrific to see a mix of comedy and action working that consistently.  And, I suspect, this sort of thing would have been hilarious to me as a 20-year-old dude.

So, I hadn't planned to see the movie, but about a week after it came out, The Admiral and I were pouring some wine (he's had a lot of practice at it at this point), and he says to me, "Have you seen this movie Deadpool?"
And I said, oh so cautiously, "Ah.  You know.  Not yet."
He looked around and then said "I took myself to see it on Wednesday.  That movie is hilarious."

So, if The Admiral liked it, how bad could it be?  I mean, the man won't let you drop the f-bomb in his actual presence, but up on the screen, everything's fair game, and he does have a ridiculously good sense of humor, so, we checked it out.

I dunno.  I found it really fun.  It was kind of what I needed this weekend.  It's a big, splatterfest R-Rated murder revenge picture, and it's not like I don't have a place in my heart for those sorts of movies from time to time.  And it is genuinely funny.  Someone finally wrote a movie that fits Ryan Reynolds' snappy delivery and jittery-kid antics, threw a CGI mask over his face, gave him Colossus as a straight man, and I basically had no complaints.

Well done, makers of Deadpool.  And god bless ya for hiring Gina Carano.  I don't know who she was supposed to be, but that was fun.



*Keith Giffen's 1980's wise-cracking, 4th-wall breaking character who was a thorn in the side of the DCU, but who never had, really, an ounce of popularity

Sci-Fi Watch: Midnight Special (2016)

Well, you can't knock his reading material selection

The Alamo Drafthouse was really pushing Midnight Special (2016), and so I saw the trailers a few times over the past couple of months.  In general, they at least piqued my curiosity, and in a weekend when I wanted to get out of the house and I was opting out of superherodom, I decided to give this one a whirl.  A college pal I've mostly lost touch with did the score for this movie, so I had all the more incentive to see this one, I guess.

The movie is uncomplicated, and were it not for a few heart-stopping moments, I'd say it was completely safe as family fare.  But, really, I'd advise for kids 13 and up.  What violence does occur is handled with something like the shock of reality ( I assume.  I don't get wrapped up in gun-play as often as you think an IT manager would.), which works very, very well in the movie, but not something for the wee ones.

The movie begins in-media-res, Alton Meyer is the subject of Amber Alerts across Texas, local news stations are putting up pictures of his birth father, Roy (Michael Shannon), as the abductor.  We learn that Meyer was the adopted son of a charismatic preacher (Sam Shepard) in a small commune/ cult of religious fundamentalists - based on the very real folks you see sometimes coming into town in Austin in their colorful dresses out of the 19th Century (and sometimes bonnets).*  They aren't anti-technology, but they certainly keep to themselves.

Pee-Wee Watch: Pee-Wee's Big Holiday (2016)

As Netflix continues its move to "purveyor of original, on-demand content (and some other crap)", they've done a fine job of finding content and talent that folks have a fondness for and bringing it back.  Your mileage will vary on these projects, but you have to admire the full-blown production values of the projects.  How the hell they do Daredevil on a a TV budget still blows my mind - and I assume that show costs a whole lotta dough per episode.

We haven't seen much of Pee-Wee Herman since the conclusion of the fantastic Pee-Wee's Playhouse, a highlight of late-80's Saturday morning TV.   Pee-Wee actor Paul Reubens was embroiled in a minor legal snafu which - in a very different era - did some damage to his career.  I dunno.  I was in high school at the time it happened, but I didn't really get what the big deal was.*

Doc Watch: David Bowie - Five Years (2013)

This week I recorded David Bowie: Five Years (2013) off PBS and gave it a whirl after Jamie retired for the evening.

If I have one complaint about the doc, it's that the whole "Five Years" bit gets away from itself as the documentary tries to claim its about five specific years in Bowie's career, but really spans better than a decade between 1971 and 1983, and while they try to stick to five years of those twelve...  it's sort of distracting.  Just call it "Golden Years" and get on with it.

But, if you get past that minor hurdle, it's a pretty good doc, giving a history of a transformative period in Bowie's career from Hunky Dory to the Let's Dance era.  It's a great mix of interviews with producers, musicians and the occasional pundit (Camille Paglia) talking about the period, so if you want to see Eno talk Low, Robert Fripp talk about working on Heroes, this is your doc.  Nile Rodgers talk about China Girl?  Tune in.

The doc, released in 2013, wondered aloud about the sudden arrival of The Next Day and seemed to have Bowie's participation, not showing his face, but using audio and visual interviews from the past to piece together the story.  And, sadly, this version contained a very quick coda with birth and death dates for Mr. Bowie.

The primary concern of the doc is tracing the musical evolution/ transformations of Bowie, tagged to his personas associated with each album from Ziggy Stardust to The Thin White Duke - but none of that really takes into account the personal changes going on aside from fame and drug use.  Bowie had children, a wife, a movie career and a lot else going on, but remains laser focused on the music, which is narrow, but an acceptable angle to approach.  It keeps Bowie at that arm's length he always seems (to me), but it leaves massive gaps in a narrative of Bowie's life writ large.

Still, I enjoyed it, and would recommend it for fans looking for a bit of what went into the albums of the era, hearing from the collaborators who were putting in blood, sweat and tears alongside the man.

Mars Re-Watch: The Martian (2015)

Last year we read Andy Weir's novel, The Martian, and watched the movie starring Matt Damon.  So, we're well covered in writing about both movie and book.

I am happy to say that the movie still holds up, and, with many more months separated between book and movie, the details that were different didn't bother me as much.  If anything, I'm still confused with the casting of Mackenzie Davis as someone I think we all believed to be Korean-American, and with the benefit of the extras on the BluRay, it's very clear that they cut a lot around Kristen Wiig, who seemed weirdly cast in the movie (she just didn't have much to do).

I'm a little frustrated in my personal life that there is still no model of the Hermes, the amazing spacecraft transporting the crew between Earth and Mars, for me to buy online.  What up with that, licensing people?

This would look great on my bookshelf.

 This may seem a little demanding, but have you seen all the BS you can buy from the Previews catalog?  Want a My Little Pony tea-cup warmer?  No problem.  Star wars kitten mittens?  Got it.  Talking Knight Rider KITT sleeper bed?  Sure, why not?

So, yeah, give me my damn Hermes model.

Coen Bros. Watch: Hail, Caesar! (2016)

As I said to Jamie when we left the movie "Normally I get annoyed when it's clear the filmmakers expect you to watch the movie more than once to 'get it'."  It's a ridiculous value proposition.  And I am not talking about returning to a mystery movie once you've seen how it all plays out so you can see the pieces working together before the big reveal.  I'm referring to a brand of filmmaking that works extra hard to show how damn smart they are that they forget to tell a compelling story and instead leave a breadcrumb trail for a message that, ultimately, you wonder why they felt they needed to make it so complex you needed a Lil' Oprhan Annie Decoder Ring to decipher it, and it still wound up being "Drink your Ovaltine."

But complexity in messaging has always been the case with the Coen Bros., going especially back to Barton Fink and playing out in even some of their most commercially viable films.  There's always a Mike Yanagita scene, a curve ball leaving you with more questions than answers or at least begging to make you look deeper, and, if you sort it out, it unlocks the picture.   After all, the Coen Bros. do not make mistakes.  They do not do extraneous.  That scene is saying something.

Now, I have my ideas about what the final scene means in Barton Fink, but I would always, always be willing to hear someone else explain it to me, because as much as I like that movie and like what it has to say about the assumptions and pretensions of the creative person, I can't quite nail that last scene on the beach.  I have my ideas, but I am willing to be convinced otherwise.

Sometimes I have a lot of patience for what the Coen Bros. are up to (Inside Llewyn Davis), and sometimes I don't (The Man Who Wasn't There).  And, frankly, while I enjoyed The Big Lebowski's screwball atmosphere the first time I saw it, it was the second time I watched it that the pieces fell in place and I felt like I actually "got it".  Which, of course, makes me want to re-watch The Man Who Wasn't There despite the fact I can't really seem to find it.  Maybe I forgive them because it doesn't feel so much like pretension as a solid movie they're putting out there, one where they offer everything up, and you can try to keep up.  And it's okay to have that nagging feeling that maybe you just saw something that you didn't entirely get on the first round.  With them, I really don't mind giving it another shot.

Hail, Caesar! (2016) was marketed as a sort of slapsticky comedy, something the Coens certainly did back in the Raising Arizona days and which they embraced mightily in The Hudsucker Proxy (a movie I will defend with punches, if necessary), riffing on post WWII-era Hollywood and the innate charm, goofiness and endless scandal that were part of the era.

But this is not that movie.

Sci-Fi Watch: Ex Machina (2015)

So, I think Randy has asked me no less than 3200 times if I'd seen Ex Machina (2015) yet.  Really I have no idea why this movie made him think of me in particular.  And I say that without the usual first paragraph snark.  I guess because I like robots.  He'll have to show up in the comments and explain his reasoning.

I finally decided to check out the movie, mostly to see Oscar Isaac in something where he wasn't Llewyn Davis or a space fighter pilot, and, yes, he's every bit as good here as you may have heard, and we're nowhere close to seeing everything he can do.  I'm really hoping the scripts come his way that can make the most of him and not let him turn into some weird Al Pacino-like parody of a self of him we've not yet seen ossified.

If I hadn't rushed out to see the movie, it was one of those times I looked at a trailer, identified a few plot points and filled in the rest, and was okay with whether or not I'd ever see the film. "Female Automoton Is Objectified, Gets Angry, is Metaphor?" was what I pulled out of the ads I'd seen.  And, truthfully, the movie itself was, more or less exactly what I expected it to be, plot-wise and narratively, but - and I want to be very clear on this - because I think my meaning was misconstrued with the Revenant write-up - if you were going to make that movie, this was as good as that particular movie was going to get.  That's not a knock, that's a "this is where I am as a movie-goer who has absorbed a lot of stories in 40 years on this spinning rock."

Doc Watch: The American Experience - Murder of a President (2016, PBS Doc)

James A. Garfield.  He wore his beard honestly.

I don't watch as much of American Experience as I once did.  I actually go to sleep from time to time these days, so that leaves less time watching TV, I guess.  But when I heard The American Experience, PBS's long running documentary series on key events in American history, was making a doc based on Candice Millard's book, Destiny of the Republic (I believe suggested to me by Picky Girl), I had to check it out.

This week's episode, Murder of a President, covers the assassination of President James Garfield.

Yes, it's a case of "the book was better than the movie", but there was never any way a 2 hour doc was going to convey all the story Millard was able to get on the page.  And, while the doc does try to capture the true tragedy of the murder, I didn't feel hollowed out in the same way that I did by the time I finished Millard's book.  In fact, I teared up a few times getting through the book. Pretty remarkable for a non-fiction accounting of a President nobody talks about anymore.

Nonetheless, the doc is terrific and does a good job of understanding and translating Millard's work, and that of other historians and archivists detailing the story.  You can watch it now on the PBS website.  

Star Wars and Mythology via Marketing

A curious thing has happened in the past month of the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  Most of my facebook friends are in my age range, and they've got kids in a wide range of ages.  Not all, but many of them, made sure they and their family partook in a screening of Star Wars.  That's a normal thing.  (A) If I have learned one thing, it's that parents mostly take kids to the movies for the possibility of silence and peace in their lives for 20- 90 minute stretches, otherwise unknown while the kids are awake, and (B) people take their kids to see Star Wars, in particular.

But I saw the families dressed up in Jedi garb, the post-Christmas-Day pics of kids in Kylo Ren masks waving $10-40 plastic lightsabers, and the joy in the posts as people proudly showed off how they'd passed down Star Wars - something I've seen even with the weaker Prequels, which I am always amazed to hear the kids like just fine.*

We are certainly in the age of multi-generational media.  Or, rather - we have re-entered an age of multi-generational storytelling.

Bear Attack Watch: The Revenant (2015)

About five minutes after the bear attack in The Revenant (2015), I started to get a sinking feeling, and as the movie unspooled, the sinking feeling grew deeper and deeper.  I like to think I have middle-of-the-road taste in movies.  I like to think I can appreciate a dumb slapstick comedy - but I'll almost never pay to see a new one.  I like to think I can enjoy a standard actioner - but I don't know that I've gone to see one in the theater in years.  I've not seen The Expendables franchise and, sorry team, the Fast and the Furious franchise holds as much interest for me as hearing you describe your dreams at length.   I like to think I can muddle my way through art-house, but rarely bother.  And Oscar Bait movies generally bore me to tears.

What hit me as the movie progressed is:  I've become an arbitrarily picky movie watcher.  There's no science to my taste, no real sense to it.  But, oh my god, am I hard on anything that actually tries.

I'm the guy who didn't particularly like The Revenant.

Amy Schumer Watch: Trainwreck (2015)

This movie I liked.  Maybe formulaic and predictable, but everything around that was pretty good.  Although Colin Quinn as the Dad of Amy Schumer made me feel 1000 years old.

Here's to Amy Schumer having another good year in 2016.

Tarantino Watch: Hateful Eight (2015)

In 2016 I am not blogging every movie I watch.  This seems like a pretty good one to start with, as I really don't feel like talking about the movie.  Let's just say it didn't need to be a three-hour movie, but it's great to see Jennifer Jason Leigh in something.  I like her a lot and she's not in much I see.

But it was a bit of a disappointment as a movie.  So I'm not going to write about it.