mini-reviews

Rather than do my standard extended essay about one movie I've seen recently, I thought I'd do something different and give little blurbs about several movies I've recently seen.  This way, you can get the gist of what the movie's about, and whether it's recommended, without having to slog through a lot of philosophizing on my part.  As per popular film critics, I'll even provide star ratings:

zero stars = Avoid at all costs!

★ = pretty bad, but with some possible redeeming value if you really, really look for it

★★ = has merit, but not worthy of a recommendation

★★★ = a sort-of flawed but ultimately enjoyable film (recommended)

★★★★ = glowing recommendation

All Superheroes Must Die -- ★★★ -- What happens when you take a talented writer, give him almost no budget, he spends almost all the money on hiring professional actors (though certainly not celebrities) and then tell him to make a high-concept film?  To be sure, the Internet is filled with examples of this scenario, but All Superheroes Must Die is a delight, sure to please superhero fans as well as admirers of plain old good script-writing.  The concept involves four superheroes who wake up in a seemingly abandoned small town, unsure of how they got there.  They quickly realize that their superpowers have vanished, and that, even without their powers, they must face a series of challenges devised by criminal genius Rickshaw in order to rescue innocent civilians (including the sister of one of the heroes) whom he has taken prisoner.

The "no powers" twist allows director/writer Jason Trost (who also plays the heroes' leader) to focus less on spectacle and more on dialogue and the relationships between the four superheroes.  The nature of heroism itself, as well as its limitations, is explored.  In short, this is a "thinking man's' superhero movie" (or a thinking woman's superhero movie, either way).  But make no mistake, there's plenty of action and suspense as well!

Minor quibbles:  A minor, pointless plot twist at the end makes absolutely no sense, and while it doesn't have much of an impact on the movie as a whole, it also poked a hole in the plot for no reason.  Also, the use of four-letter words seems jarringly out of place in this type of movie, as foul language is so rarely used in superhero films.  Still, the intriguing plot and highly intelligent script make this a highly entertaining film.  Available via Amazon Instant Play and Netflix.

Comic-Con Episode IV:  A Fan's Hope -- ★★★★ -- Morgan Spurlock, best known for his McDonald's documentary Super Size Me!, turns his attention to Comic-Con, an annual convention for fans of comic books, fantasy, and science fiction.  Interviews include celebrities both in these fields (Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, etc.) and in the mainstream (Seth Rogen, Kenneth Branagh), but the focus is on several particular convention attendees -- including two would-be comic book artists looking to break into the business, a comic book shop owner who must sell a priceless comic in order to save his business, a brilliant young costume designer who hopes to dazzle people by submitting several entries to the annual Comic-Con costume contest, and a young man who met his girlfriend at a previous Comic-Con and hopes to propose to her at the current event.  By emphasizing the personal experiences of the film's subjects, Spurlock allows us to get to know how these people think and feel, shining an affectionate light on individuals who might otherwise be thought of as outsiders.  This is just a highly entertaining film -- and the Kevin Smith monologue about what he would say to his younger self about Comic-Con is just plain hilarious!  Available via Amazon Instant Play.

Django Unchained -- ★★★★ -- Maybe I'm a bit biased here, as I'm a fan of Quentin Tarantino.  But with this combination of beautiful cinematography, fun celebrity cameos, and sometimes brilliant dialogue, it should be hard for even a fair-minded critic to avoid recommendation.  The story involves Django (Jamie Foxx), a black man rescued from slavery in the 19th Century south, and recruited to team up with a bounty hunter (delightfully played by Christoph Waltz) in the Deep South and Old West.  The result is an effective mixture of genres, an action-comedy-drama Western, with hints of a love story, thanks to Django's quest to reunite with his wife (who was also sold into slavery, but to a different owner).

Django may be the central character, but the best roles go to Waltz, whose natural eloquence is perfectly captured by Tarantino's script, and Leonardo DiCaprio, whose sense of Southern honor and gentility sharply contrasts with his cruelty as a slave-holder who enjoys watching slaves get torn limb from limb, either in forced death matches, or by dogs trained to attack runaways.

Some people may object to this film's foul language (especially the use of the word "nigger") and brutal violence, but both are absolutely necessary, the first to maintain a cultural and historical accuracy (slave traders surely didn't refer to their slaves as "African-American") and the latter to illustrate the pure sadism of slavery; here we see that not all slave-owners kept their slaves purely out of financial necessity, but often as an excuse to commit heinous acts of cruelty and barbarism on fellow human beings.  This is not just Tarantino using violence for exploitation's sake, it's an important message and theme of the film.  Currently in theaters.

Flight  -- ★★ -- Denzel Washington.  Don Cheadle.  John Goodman.  These are all highly captivating, and highly talented, performers, and teaming them with director Robert Zemeckis seems like an idea rife with entertainment value.  Alas, after the exciting event that sets the story in motion (a plane crashes, but the astoundingly genius skills of the pilot save almost everyone onboard) the film apparently has nowhere to go.  The movie can't decide whether Captain Whitaker, the pilot character played by Washington, deserves to be treated as either a hero (due to his actions on the plane) or a criminal (due to the fact that he had alcohol and cocaine in his system during the flight).  The supporting characters debate this endlessly without ever getting past extremely superficial declarations ("You're a hero!" exclaims one.  "Does your client know he's going to jail?" asks another.  Etc.) and so we never get any insight into the cultural dilemma of what to do about someone who breaks the rules horrendously and yet commits an act of heroism as a result of it.  A waste of a lot of great talent both behind and in front of the camera.  Currently in theaters, but yet already available on Io.

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold -- ★★★★ -- Another documentary from Morgan Spurlock?  Okay, so this one isn't that new, but watching Comic-Con made me want to re-watch this one, as Spurlock turns his attention to advertising, especially product placement, the practice of sneaking (sometimes not so sneakily) advertisements into the content of movies, TV, and other forms of art.  The concept that drives the film's narrative is that Spurlock wants to find commercial sponsors for his next movie -- which itself is about his quest to find commercial sponsors for his next movie.  In the process, Spurlock interviews advertising execs, consumer protection advocates, and random people on the street.  Spurlock's sense of humor pervades the film throughout, without ever becoming disrespectful or intrusive (as opposed to, say, the style of Michael Moore).  This makes an interesting double-bill with Comic-Con, which treats its subjects with obvious affection, while The Greatest Movie Ever Sold has a much more "tongue in cheek" feel.  One notable contrast:  Spurlock himself is the main character in Greatest Movie, while  he never appears at all, not even as an interviewer's voice, in Comic-Con.  Available via Amazon Instant Play and Netflix.

Safety Not Guaranteed -- ★★★ -- This highly entertaining mixture of quiet drama and quirky comedy stars unknown young actress Aubrey Plaza as Darius Britt, a journalism intern who accompanies a boss and another intern on an investigation into who could have possibly posted an unsigned classified ad seeking a companion for a time travel adventure.  This being a movie set in the real world, the possibility that the time travel is legit is promptly dismissed, but magazine reporter Jeff Schwensen thinks that the eccentric who posted the ad might be good for a few laughs in a curiosity piece.  Instead, however, Jeff immediately gets distracted by other goals, such as reuniting with a lost love, leaving Darius to investigate the would-be time traveler on her own.  The relationship that develops between Darius and her subject, Kenneth, is the main concern of the film.  Available via Netflix.

The Squid and the Whale -- no stars -- This movie boasts Jeff Daniels and Jesse Eisenberg in the main cast, and Noah Baumbach -- the occasional writing partner of the brilliant Wes Anderson -- behind the camera, so you'd think it'd be worth watching.  But this drama about a family torn apart by divorce is both superficial and mind-numbingly boring.  The always captivating Daniels himself is the only reason to watch this movie, but even he's not up to the challenge of making his one-dimensional character interesting.  Available via Amazon Instant Play and Netflix -- but don't waste your time.

Stand-up Guys -- ★★★ -- After spending decades in the joint, "Val" Valentine is released from prison, only to learn that his best friend, mafia hitman Doc, has been assigned to kill him.  No hard feelings; Val understands that Doc is just following orders, and doesn't take it personally at all.  Together, Doc and Val decide to have one more night of adventure and fun, out on the town, before Doc pulls the trigger.

As Val, Al Pacino is pretty much the whole movie.  Yes, Christopher Walken, who plays Doc, shares equal billing and screen time, and is usually a powerful screen presence.  But here -- and this is not a complaint, mind you, just an observation of the character -- he lacks the spark of most Christopher Walken characters.  No, Pacino is pretty much the whole show, although a few supporting characters do get moments to shine, particularly Alan Arkin in an extended cameo (a role much smaller than the ads would have you believe) as an elderly, retired getaway driver who turns out to still have more than a bit of the old magic in him.  Currently in theaters.

My 2 Cents on the Griffin Mansion Fiasco

There is a column on the MSN News website called "Rossen Reports," a column dedicated to exposing scams.  Here is a link to yesterday's Rossen Report, but if you're not interested in reading the whole article, let me summarize a bit:  The article is about Griffin Mansions, an estate located close to Las Vegas, that rents itself out for extravagant weddings.  For years, Griffin Mansions illegally operated its business without the proper permits, including health permits (which would allow them to serve food), liquor licenses, etc.  Eventually, the government got sick of waiting for the permits to be filed, and shut the business down.  The thing is, even a month after being shut down, Griffin Mansion was still booking new events -- and, more to the point, accepting payment for those events -- long after they knew that they wouldn't be able to deliver.

To make matters worse, it now turns out that, even before the government shut them down, the owners of Griffin Mansion apparently never intended to use their clients' money for its intended purpose -- paying for the weddings -- as the owners instead used the money from the business account to pay for their own personal shopping sprees, spa excursions, and fertility treatments.  Griffin Mansion had actually produced a number of truly glorious weddings in the past -- just enough to build up a solid reputation -- only to then use that reputation to scam people out of what will probably come out to millions of dollars, when you add up all that they bilked from their dozens of victims.

Okay, I hope that everyone reading this agrees that the actions of these con artists are absolutely deplorable.  I'm running on the assumption that we can all agree that that much, at least, is a given.  But what I want to talk about here isn't the actions of the con artists.  I want to talk about the online reaction that this news story has generated.

If you go to any number of online sources -- most notably the MSN News page that broke this story in the first place -- you will find a few people who are sympathetic to the con artists' victims.  But these people are far, far outnumbered by people who either delight in the victims' distress (usually implying that the victims, due to either their naivete or their wealth, somehow deserve their misfortune) or take the opportunity to make groundless accusations and insults to the brides ("she probably would have ruined his life anyway" seems to be the most common one, as if the readers of the article somehow personally know these women).  In fact, the comments section got so vitriolic that MSN News apparently had to shut down the comments section, which has disappeared from the page since the first time I read the article (late night on Feb. 5, the date it was published).

In response to all of this hostility, I would like to respond by quoting the late, great, William Shakespeare:  What the fuck, people?!?  (Okay, I admit that's more of a paraphrase of the Bard than an outright quotation.)  Seriously, it's not like I'm a stranger to the wealth of senseless rancor on the Web.  I used to be a very active poster on the IMDb, until all the hostility motivated me to delete my account.  I used to be a very active editor for Wikipedia until the pure malevolence of other editors motivated me to delete my account there as well.  So by now, I'm well aware that people use the anonymity of the Web to say some truly awful things, usually without any provocation at all.  But every time I think I've finally grasped the awfulness of humanity, the Internet shows me that people can get even worse than I'd previously suspected.

I think even the the most naive of us is aware that there are unscrupulous people out there who are out to make a buck and will do anything, regardless of legality or morality, to do it.  But reading the user comments after the Rossen Report on Griffin Mansions makes me wonder, not for the first time, whether the Internet somehow naturally attracts the absolute worst of humanity, or if I'm really reading an accurate representation of how the general public behaves and thinks.

I'm not going to go on and on ranting about people in general, because most of the people reading this most likely are people I know, like, and respect.  But I do want to make a few more relevant observations before I leave this topic behind:

1.  There seems to be an element of "sour grapes" going on in the comments, as many people are explicitly reacting to what they see as an unnecessarily extravagant expenditure on the wedding packages.  Griffin Mansion's "all-inclusive" package, which includes not only use of the space but also flowers, food, photography, etc., runs a little more than $20,000.  First of all, I ask you if twenty grand really seems like an "unnecessarily extravagant" amount to spend on what is traditionally referred to as "the most important day of your life."  It seems to me that many of these victims are possibly not wealthy at all, but just middle-class people like you and me, who have had the misfortune of being bilked out of the money they have been saving up for this extremely important life event.

But even if you answer "yes, that's way too much money for a reasonable person to spend on a wedding" and jump to the conclusion that these people must be wealthy, I still don't understand how that justifies the hate poured on these victims.  Yes, times are hard for many of us these days, but does that mean that wealthy people somehow automatically deserve our disgust and bile?  I just don't understand that kind of thinking.

2.  One brave soul already went to the comments page and made many of the same points I just made above.  She defended the victims and said that they did not deserve the hate poured onto them by previous comments.  This woman was shouted down by such an overwhelming majority of posters that I felt sorry for the poor girl.  Some posters called her naive, while others used a thesaurus-worth of synonyms for words that could otherwise be spelled with only four letters.  Despicable.

3.  With plenty of help from my parents and wife, I recently paid for and planned my own wedding, so I know first-hand how expensive and stressful the whole thing can be.  I know what it feels like when something, even a relatively small thing, goes wrong at the last minute.  The thought of going to all that trouble and spending all that money only to find out that it was all for nothing, that the money is gone, the venue is gone, and you don't have the resources or time to come up with any alternative because the date is far, far too soon by the time you find out that the whole thing is in the pot . . . well, I both can and can't imagine that happening.  Yeah, I know that's a direct contradiction, but it's also true.

Anyway, I'm winding down, and if you're expecting me to reach some kind of insightful point, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't have anything.  But I will close by posing my earlier question:  What's with all the pure venom on the 'net these days?  Is there really something about the Internet that attracts the evil of humanity more than the good?  Or is that actually an accurate representation of us at our most basic, and the anonymity of the Web is just allowing us to show our true face?  I ask you, readers.  I ask you.