Movie and Television Reviews

I don't know what it says about the state of our culture that a good percentage of the best movies from the last fifteen years have been for children (animation's share of the best comedies over that time period is even greater. How many adult comedies are as funny as Shrek, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Ratatouille, etc.?).

I do completely understand their appeal, however. Pixar and Dreamworks seemingly have the most clever writers, talented computer artists, and competent directors. They're able to create bi-leveled movies with something for both adults and children while providing their audience a safe haven from adult themes and tradition-shattering foolishness.

In Monsters vs. Aliens, an meteor hits girl-next-door Susan on her wedding day. The meteor contains quantonium which, as everybody knows, is the most powerful substance in the universe. Susan absorbs the quantonium, and it makes her grow to gigantic proportions.

The government captures and places her in a holding cell with Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D., an insect-headed mad scientist, the Missing Link, a 20,000-year-old fish-man, B.O.B., a gelatin-like, jolly, indestructible monster and Insectosaurus, a fuzzy bug that stands at 350 feet tall.

Each of them has strengths and weaknesses that interplay with each other to great comedic effect.

They bond while in jail. Dr. Cockroach attempts to help Susan realize her dream of getting back to normal size and thus being reuniting with her fiance, Derek Dietl.

Meanwhile, evil alien Gallaxhar has a dream of his own, to get the quantonium and conquer earth.

Gallaxhar sends a giant robot probe to earth to find the quantonium. The government dispatches the monster team to San Francisco to engage the probe. Susan discovers her super powers and defeats the probe.

Gallaxhar goes himself to earth and captures Susan.

The last part of the film concerns the monsters' battle to rescue Susan and defeat Gallaxhar.

Subplots include Susan's relationship with her fiance and a very brief crisis of confidence from Link after "a girl" saves the world instead of himself.

MvA is both more and less than similar efforts. It's more because it treats classic horror movie fans to The Blob, Attack of the 50-foot Woman (Susan grows to 49'11" in MvA), Creature from the Black Lagoon, Mothra, and The Fly references.

It's less because we've seen this type of ironic humor before. Which doesn't mean that the jokes aren't funny. Gags like the situation room girl screaming after every alien update and the president greeting the aliens with a synthesizer had me LOL.

The animation and 3D effects are as stunning as you'd expect.

Politics/Message:

We have a "follow your heart"/"acceptance of difference/self" theme and a tea spoon's worth of feminism in that Susan must independentcize herself from Derek.

Otherwise, MvA is a very conservative movie. There's duty and loyalty stuff. The writers respect marriage by not having Susan and Derek say "I do."

What makes MvA a right-wing snickerfest, however, is whom the writers lampoon. Movies that make fun of conservatives portray them as prudes, ignoramuses, hypocrites, or war mongers.

There's a character named "W.R. Monger," but he's a real hero, more like the harsh drill sergeant from Stripes than a blustery coward like the DI's captain.

The way to make fun of liberals is to show them as naive and foolish. The president's insistence of a friendly encounter with the Gallaxhar's robot probe after which he's attacked, reminiscent of the welcoming scene in Mars Attacks!, and his cowardly, useless, media-motivated, reactions afterward, qualify as liberal parody. Now, whom does the MvA president resemble more: war hero McCain or the relatively inexperienced and untested man who beat him?

There's also a scene where the staffers react to the crisis by wanting to offer the aliens Green Cards and asking, "What would Oprah do?" before being set strait by Monger.

Cast and credits below:

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I was watching 24 with my father (like the old days). I didn't think anything about the Mountain Dew commercial when it came on, but my father said, "Ya no respetan nada." Oh, sorry. He said, "They don't respect anything anymore."

Hmmm. I thought about it. "My father has a point; one can't imagine a commercial with Martin Luther King playing whatever he liked to play."

More thinking.

Lincoln was a great man and leader, assassinated. He's kind of a joke now with most people, however. Martin Luther King fits more with the historical narrative preferred in schools: that American history is the constant quest for a more equal society.

I stopped thinking and enjoyed the rest of the show.

In Lost's second episode this season, Hurley recounts to his mother what transpired from the time Desmond Hume's lack of vigilance dooms Oceanic Air Flight 815 to his present conversation.

I couldn't help but feel that the show had lost its way (so to speak) as Hurley went on. For five years, each season not only kept up a high level of quality but managed to add complexity to its ever-unfolding plot while maintaining coherence (are you listening Ron Moore of Battlestar Galactica? c-o-h-e-r-e-n-s-e), "How could they have sketched all of that out from the beginning," I'd ask in wonderment at the writers' accomplishment.

Then, they left the island.

The show began to sputter. Things happened, of course: Said killed, Linus too. People on the island, in the city. I just didn't know why they happened. What were they trying to do?

Just like John Locke can't walk off the island, the show stumbles when on a continent.

Now, they're back on the island, and I again understand what's going on: Jack's trying to fulfill some kind of destiny. Sawyer's trying to keep everybody safe. Jin and Sun need to reunite. They all have to avoid the impending genocide of the Others and then get of the island. Everybody has a clear motivation. The characters may not know why they had to return to the island, but now that they're back they and the show have a reason to continue.

The Sawyer, Jack, Kate, Juliet love square intrigues my wife, too.

Bugsy, Godfather, Boyz in the Hood, American Me (or Blood In Blood Out), Scarface, Angels with Dirty Faces; every ethnic group needs a gangster movie to call its own, to remind its members that they can be just as cruel, tough, and resourceful as the next race- even if their whole hood is currently on the honor roll at Berkeley.

Baby is the first Asian-American gangster movie, I think, and it's a good one (Slumdog Millionaire is set in India so we need one for the Hindi-hoods. Eskimo Gs would be interesting, "Hey, Sled Dog, do we have a word for 'bloody ice' yet?").

Baby is an Asian pre-pubescent whose gangster neighbors involve him in a crime, for which he has to go to juvy. While there, he suffers the usual prison pangs (ouch!), but eventually toughens up, prison style (brutal soap-in-a-sock scene). Baby is unable to adjust to life after jail and gets a gig with an Asian gang start-up led by a homicidal psycho. The gang's reign of terror in the middle part of the movie is quite remarkable. I'll never be able to attempt a pool shot while facing away from the hall entrance again.

The shenanigans impress Asian godfather Benny, whose lack of courage at the gang fight that cost Baby eight years in the pen should have ended Benny's G career, enough that Benny invites Baby to join his operation. Baby negotiates the merging.

Betrayals, remorse, determination. Baby can't bring himself to butcher a little kid and confronts Benny.

Things end in a satisfying frenzy.

Benny (Feodor Chin) and Mike (veteran actor Ken Choi of Crash, 24, Heroes, CSI, and a bunch of other stuff), and "Pops" (Tzi Ma) give strong performances. David Huynh and some of the other actors, not so much- a little stilted, as is some of the direction: actors look like they're standing around repeating lines.

The action is appropriately bloody and the basic story is compelling enough. One must (do it, now!) applaud Baby's creative ambition: Baby employs a flashback story structure that challenges the audience, for good and ill. Some of the scenes are complicatedly layered like when Mike recounts the OG gang's demise with his face, the narrated story behind him, and a girl singing karaoke all visible at the same time.

Side plots like the father-son relationship, the hooker-mole (sexy, though), and the romance don't quite have the relevance to the main story or emotional impact that they should. I'm not sure why the movie's set ten years before the present.

The best scene is the one in which Benny invites Baby to join his operation. As a gangster's reputation is his de facto resume and because Baby's presence either jeopardizes his standing or just reminds him of his shame, Benny feels the need to tell Baby how he's made up for his cowardice by leading his current gang to prominence. Benny enumerates his responsibilities as shotcaller- bookkeeping, rub-outs, keeping the stalls stocked with TP, and otherwise makes the case it's hard out there for an Asian pimp.

It's stuff us gangsta bloggers understand.

Politics/Message:

The hero of Baby, Baby's gang mentor, takes a 10-year-old to a gang slaughter, gives him a gun, and sends him down the path to no-goodville- not exactly stuff they teach at Sunday school. Within gang culture, however, he's an honorable man because he didn't leave the fight, unlike Benny.

Baby's nerdy neighbor is presented in a good light, and is even able to knock Baby out.

It's interesting how people associate and disassociate depending on the circumstance. The pan-Asian gang in Baby can probably only exist in America where their intra-Asian differences are minimized by being a small percentage, collectively, of the overall American population.

Baby

American Me

Blood In, Blood Out

Cast below:

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Knowing is like a M. Night Shyamalan movie, but watchable. Or maybe a combination of M at his best and Tim Lehane's Left Behind. Whatever the categorization, I think most people will find it very entertaining, and a few will find within its story a tasty intellectual bon bon.

Knowing starts with a girl gifted by some creepy guys with a prophesy which she compulsively scribbles in the form of a meaningful number series on a piece of paper. Her teacher takes the paper and buries it as part of a time capsule school project. Fifty years later, John Koestler"s (Nicolas Cage) son gets handed the letter at the capsule-opening ceremony. Jack Koestler is an agnostic widower, son of a preacher, and physics professor at MIT.

Koestler finds out that the numbers can predict disasters. He attempts to find the original scribbler and encounters her daughter Rose Byrne (Diana Wayland) instead. Rose happens (well, it's fated so) to have a little girl. Rose and Koestler eventually find out that the final prediction foretells the destruction of the earth.

Knowing is alternatively thoughtful, creepy, and exciting. The disaster scenes are the best I've seen: seeing actual victims instead of just a fireball or a crash is very affecting.

If the primary criteria for a suspense movie is how suspenseful it is, then Knowing is very good indeed. I had no idea of Knowing's turns or its ultimate destination: "Who were the creepy guys?" "Can the events be stopped?"

A follow-the-clues plot like Cage's National Treasure would have been good all on its own, but the horror and theological elements act as a booster stage that takes the movie above the norm for this genre.

Knowing's unusual in that there's nothing or nobody to "defeat."

Politics/Message:

Most movie reviewers didn't like Knowing because most reviewers are atheists. According to Rotten Tomatoes Knowing's just a little better than the global warming morality plays The Happening and Day the Earth Stood Still (The Day the Audience Fell Asleep). Knowing's far superior.

The movie is unusual in its promotion (acknowledgment) of a non-random universe and respect for religion. The "random versus designed" argument is presented fairly and the students' reaction to the professor's tepid support for randomness is mild shock, as if they hadn't thought about randomness' true implications.

In fiction, the author's opinions are obvious from his characters' behavior. Song of Bernadette presents those skeptical of the Marian apparition as soul-less bigots (Vincent Price) while the believers are simply sincere. The cruel warden in Shawshank Redemption has a Bible on his desk. Knowing's Christian characters are Professor Koestler's sister and parents. They're decent people. Significantly, the sister is fun, cool, and less uptight than the professor. Another skeptical MIT scientist is arrogant.

The Happening

Day the Earth Stood Still (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition)

Spoiler below:

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My guess is that Dave White, the movie reviewer for Movies.com is secular, childless, and a liberal. That would also make him of a garden variety in his industry.

Here's part of his review of teen movie Fired Up, which I somehow managed to miss:

What's The Deal: Seriously, an R-rating and this would have been a totally different, way better movie. In the '70s, and even more so in the '80s -- the golden age of teen sex comedies, when you had movies like H.O.T.S. and Zapped! and all sorts of really excellent exploitation going on -- the teens were actually allowed to have sex. They didn't just tease you with euphemisms and wacky body-part-hiding slapstick. They "did it." They were 27-year-olds acting like high-school seniors but they used all the good R-rated words and they played Strip Monopoly and we liked it that way. They were funny because they were raunchy and dirty and sometimes disgusting. But now everything has to be responsible and safe enough for my 12-year-old niece to watch and rely on actual witty dialogue for the laughs. And that doesn't happen nearly enough. It's not a great leap forward in human behavior; it's the de-evolution of comedy.

Any man who looks at the world and thinks that the lack of teen rauchiness and sex (or the promotion thereof) is a societal problem is a deeply disconnected man. I hope, if he ever has a daughter, that she act exactly like the girls did in Porky's. OK. I take it back. I hope she reads Asymmetric and acts like the girls in What's the Deal. I'm not that mean.

The advertising world's alternative to waterboarding. This might be an economic recovery idea: Run this commercial and stimulate the electronics industry by forcing people to replace their shoe-damaged TV sets.