Movie and Television Reviews

I check out movies.com to see what's playing. Sometimes, I read the reviews by Dave and Dawn. They're the type of reviewers whose suggestions normal people would be wise to inverse. I've called out Dave before. This time it's Dawn.

The new movie, Blind Side, is ruined, according to Dawn, because it's racist.

Racist? You mean it doesn't like black people? No, it says that we should help people and the main character decides that she wants to help a black person. What's the problem with that? Aren't we supposed to help people? Well, Dawn thinks black people shouldn't need help:

If the movie is to be believed, he was little more than a big, lovable pet that wealthy suburbanites Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy (Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw) literally picked up off the street and brought home like a stray cat. If this sounds more than a little offensive, then you have a lot more sensitivity than the makers of The Blind Side.

You mean Dawn is some cold Ayn Rand self-help evangelist? No, I'm guessing she's a liberal and believes in mucho government programs to "help" the poor. She probably wants middle-class people to pay for poor people's health care (taking the indigent into a hospital is like taking in a stray cat, no?).

For people like Dawn, impersonal charity is better because then you don't have to thank people, some of whom may be (gasp!) conservative Christians! Eek! Imagine having to thank Sarah Palin for anything:

"Props? We need a shinier halo for Ms. Bullock." Bleached blonde to play the real-life Mrs. Tuohy, Bullock is predictably feisty with a thick Southern accent, all the better for delivering the almost unbelievably clichéd dialogue (when someone tells Leigh Anne, "You're changing that boy's life," she responds with the predictable, "No -- he's changing mine"). Except that we don't see any growth or change in Leigh Anne -- at film's end, she's the same conservative Christian, hard-charging Tennessee belle, no better or worse or different than she was at the beginning. We are supposed to see her as a white savior, canonized for stepping out of her rich soccer-mom life to uplift a downtrodden black man, and any uplift you may feel at watching The Blind Side comes at the cost of pure racism.

So, there you have it. She gives the movie a "D+" because the wrong people are giving charity to people who should be getting it, presumably, from the government. No doubt if "Blind Side" was about how community organizers empowered a community to shake down banks and tobacco companies, she'd have given it an "A+."

One more thing: Blind Side is a true story. The helper and helpee are still alive. Is Michael Oher resentful for being treated like a toy? Does it occur to Dawn that being offended for somebody who is still alive and can speak for himself is, well, offensive?

My wife and daughter don't like me ruining their girly fun at these movies, so I asked my daughter to write a review. It follows:

I saw the movie New Moon and I would like to tell you about it. I really liked New Moon because it was fun and interesting. I personally think a lot of people (girls especially) would like this movie.

New Moon is the second movie in the Twilight series. Twilight is about a quiet girl, Bella, who gets involved with vampires and wolves, but especially one vampire, Edward.

Edward and his family are good vampires who never hurt humans. Bella and Edward fall in love but have a lot of troubles with the bad vampires who hurt people.

Next, I will tell you about the plot or plots of New Moon. One problem is that Edward has to leave Bella and she feels lonely, so every night she dreams of him. She feels scared and unprotected without him. She has to make new friends.

Another plot is that Victoria, a bad vampire, tries to attack Bella. Jacob, a man-wolf, tries to save her because he pledges his love to Bella, even though she refuses him. Jacob is just so kind that he protects Bella while Edward is gone. Jacob protects Bella because there's a bad vampire trying to hunt her, which is Victoria.

I liked many parts of New Moon but there was one that I was a little more interested in. It was when Edward is going to reveal himself to the humans and Bella comes to save him. She's scared that he will reveal himself so she runs for it. When she gets there, he's about to reveal himself, but she comes just in time and pushes him back in. Then they go into the place where they kill vampires who don't want to live any more.

They're going to kill Edward and they think that Bella knows too much so they also want to kill her.

[**spoiler alert**]

Alice, Edward's sister, makes the bad vampires not kill Bella.

[Message/Poliitics:]

The message of this movie is to never leave someone behind that you love unless it is necessary to protect them. They show us this because many bad things happen when Edward leaves Bella.

This is what I have to say about the movie New Moon.

Me:

Well, there you have it. I'm sorry I missed it.

Special note/warning [me, too]:

My wife loved it as well. She came home mad at me because I don't act like the vampires (protective, sweet, etc.), indicating that you guys should wait until this movie wears off before approaching your girlfriend or spouse.

Tags: "reviews by girls"

I went to two of the three Liberty Film Festival events and read their defunct Libertas blog (now residing wherever dead blogs go upon death. This was a good one so probably blog heaven) regularly. They have a new movie out called Kalifornistan. It looks to be a comedy. The trailer definitely stretches out the joke. I'm getting the DVD because of the nice LFF memories I have and also because Govindini Murty is one one of the most beautiful women I've seen and seemed super nice to boot.

**Update: For a complete review, go here**

"Some people want to fill the world with [manipulative, melodramatic, derivative, exploitive, lowest-common-denominator hackery]. And, what’s wrong with that? I’d like to know."

-Paul McCartney

Before I start, I’d like to say that, if possible, you should see this movie in a predominantly Hispanic theater. The premieres of 2012 in Huntington Park (with subtitles) and Pico Rivera were a combination of Mardi Gras, the Academy Awards, and an Olympics opening ceremony: Long lines, unlicensed street vendors, and people milling about who may not have had tickets, but still wanted to be where the action is. Inside the theater itself: newborns (PG-13 my pompis), great grandparents- everybody.

"Hard to imagine? It's easy if you try."

-John Lennon

If you’re a middle-aged White guy, imagine your reaction upon the announcement of a new rooftop Beatles concert where the two surviving members will join a resurrected John and George. OK? Well, double that. That’s what 2012 means to us (interestingly, a person who denies the end of world in HP thinks himself a Christopher Hitchens-like skeptic/intellectual). My wife said she hadn’t felt that way about a movie since Titanic.

Plot, in one sentence:

Scientists discover that the earth’s core will cause a world-wide cataclysm and inform the authorities, who then prepare a way for some humanity to survive and sell tickets to participate in the plan, which one family can’t afford, leading the family to find an alternative. Do they? No spoilers here.

Derivative:

2012 is a pastiche of numerous pseudo-scientific/mystical disaster movies, most of which also happen to have been directed by Roland Emmerich: There are ignored warnings, plans (Deep Impact), races against time, and a stapled-on love story.

Caharacter-wise, we have the divorced father-loser who still loves his kids’ mother from War of the Worlds; the scientist with the correct theory who’s not taken seriously by his colleagues from Independence Day, Stargate as well as the crazy, but correct conspiracy theorist from ID; the cute kid with a soon-to-be-resolved life-impediment; the corrupt politician; the president’s daughter; the good president from Independence Day; various personages from Armageddon, Jurassic Park, Poseidon Adventure; Day After Tomorrow, and Knowing. Truly, the gang’s all here.

Hackery:

About fourteen times in the movie, the characters barely escape ahead of some shock wave, debris shower, or ground collapse. They almost hit a bunch of stuff. After a while, you feel like you're on one of those Back to the Future/Star Tours rides where you're strapped to a seat inside a shaking box and watch a video of meteors or dinosaurs coming at and missing you.

Absurdities abound: Why does the head scientist of a secret location have to meet the trespassers? Isn't that what security's for?

For some, a youtube highlighting the impressive, I guess, destruction scenes will do.

Melodramatic/ manipulative:

The family scenes barely register above "trite" on the authenticity meter. We're led to care about a puppy. The world's ending and Emmerich expects the audience to shed a tear for a useless dog (sorry, owners of yapping rat-dogs [not that you ever care about your neighbors' sleep]).

Exploitative:

I think Emmerich should next do a movie about a deadly swine flu epidemic.

Yet:

My attention never wavered and I found myself cheering the protagonists' escapes and break-ins. Something subtle was going on here: My mind said “stop,” but my bootie squirmed as every type of land, sea, and air vehicle narrowly escaped doom.

2012 is a cheesy movie that thrills. Roland Emmerich is the opposite of M. Night Shyamalan: Emmerich is a low to middlebrow genius while Shymalan is a hoity bore.

Lastly:

I like that humanity will restart where it began. Like a homo sapien reboot. Guys, this time keep the apples away from the women.

I'd love to see is a television series that extends the ending.

Politics/message:

Hmmm. The movie's as deep as the earth's post-shift crust, but such a scenario can't help but deal with some big issues.

We know that people will turn to God at the end of the world. He doesn't show up in the movie, however, and nobody has a faith crisis. Religion's mostly just a way to deal with horrible events: "Smoke 'em if you got 'em"

(Maybe it's for the best: Remember Contact?)

"If we are only for ourselves, what are we?"

The moral crisis that Emmerich does deal with is a fairness lesson appropriate for a 4th-grade journal topic (a leading one at that): "Should only rich people survive the end of the world?" Proving that Star Trek changed the world, it's claimed that any non-inclusive decision will sacrifice the group's "humanity."

I did find it semi-clever when they asked whether their first action should be a loving or practical one.

Thankfully, no eco-preaching.

Cast and crew below:

Read more »

Tags: mexican, mexican-american

Magnificent.

A Christmas Carol combines a traditional, faithful in every sense of the word telling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with probably the best realistic-type animation ever, surpassing the previous record-holders, Up and Bolt from the past year.

It’s been usual for contemporary adaptations to update the CC premise, sometimes infusing it with a modern, secular sensibility. Not this time. We get a historically accurate setting with characters approaching Christmas as one would imagine a Victorian Brit would: No toys, just family meals and good will. No doubt this is because Zemeckis uses the exact sequence of events as the original story and keeps Dickens’ language in all of its Victorian glory. The latter means that Scrooge and the love he discards for money break their "contract," not their "engagement," Scrooge doesn’t ask to be "taken away," but "removed," and purchases Turkeys from the "Poulterers."

(It wouldn’t be an altogether bad idea next year to purchase the DVD and watch CC it in one’s home with Dickens’ text in hand.)

Zemeckis' direction is extraordinary with some wonderful angles and a quite effective chase scene. The pacing, near-perfect; only once did I feel the arc sagging a bit.

Good music and just the perfect amount of sensible scariness for kids about 8 years old.

Message/Politics:

CC is probably the most anti-Ayn Rand movie of the year: Men cannot be happy being selfish. In fact, our joy correlates quite strongly with how much we help our fellow men. In CC, Charity is a duty to one’s neighbors and oneself and it's primarily because…

…God meant it when He commanded to care for others as we would ourselves. CC is that rare supernatural movie that’s also theologically sound. Choices in the earthly life affect the next, or, each act of selfishness is a link in the chain one drags in Hell, to borrow Dickens’ metaphor. And no amount of post-condemnation charitable inclination can remedy one’s fate, as one ghost in CC finds out after futily offering to relieve and mother and her child’s suffering.

There are earthly consequences for the selfish rich as well. Poverty and Ignorance, personified in CC by a little boy and girl who grow up to be a criminal and prostitute respectively, attack Scrooge; suggesting a kind of Marxist rising of the proletariat.

Yet, CC isn’t a leftist movie, either. At one point Scrooge asks a man seeking donations for the poor if the workhouses, union shops, and prisons have shut down. Or, “I don’t need to give because the government already takes care of the poor. “

This is the theme of a book called Who Really Cares by Arthur Brooks which shows that religious conservatives, what Scrooge becomes at the end of the story, give much more money to charity than liberals, with one of the speculations as to why posited by Brooks being that socialists think charity is the government's job. You can see the verification of this theory on this chart:

Rank Countries Amount
# 1 Australia: 18%
# 2 United States: 15%
# 3 Netherlands: 9%
= 4 Ireland: 7%
= 4 Norway: 7%
= 6 Canada: 6%
= 6 Belgium: 6%
= 8 Germany: 5%
= 8 Finland: 5%
= 8 United Kingdom: 5%
= 8 Sweden: 5%
= 8 France: 5%
= 13 Austria: 3%
= 13 Italy: 3%
= 13 Switzerland: 3%
= 16 Denmark: 2%
= 16 Japan: 2%
Weighted average: 6.2%

So, CC is a conservative movie in that it forwards the idea that free enterprise married to a virtuous, NGO-obliged (like religion) mass ethic makes for the best society (as opposed to a Randian or Marxist one).

There is an anti-clerical line for people who aren't completely comfortable with organized religion.

I thought to myself: "Where have I seen this theme- man exploiting nature and corrupting an innocent culture with his greedy ways and lust for conquest?"

Then, it came to me: just about everywhere! So, I go on youtube for a clip of Ferngully in order to make my point in a humorous way and bam! I discover that somebody had the same idea:

**update**

It's worse than I thought. One would expect Big Hollywood to ding a movie for its overt liberalism, but Variety?

Thematically, the film also plays too simplistically into stereotypical evil-white-empire/virtuous-native cliches, especially since the invaders are presumably on an environmental rescue mission on behalf of the entire world, not just the U.S. Script is rooted very much in a contemporary eco-green mindset, which makes its positions and the sympathies it encourages entirely predictable and unchallenging.

It's a near 100% rule that people love messages in movies...as long as they agree with them (making a point of not having a message is a message too- nihilism). So, who will love the messages in this movie? Anti-Americans and Naturists.

**update #2**

Apparently, it urges people, indirectly, to root against Americans and encourages military desertions.

**update #3**

A more in-depth analysis here.

FernGully: The Last Rainforest (Family Fun Edition)

FernGully 2 - The Magical Rescue

Dances with Wolves - Extended Cut (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

Pocahontas (10th Anniversary Edition)

Pocahontas II - Journey to a New World (Disney Gold Classic Collection)

Tags: "anti-american", environmentalist, lefty, liberal, mashup, progressive

I watched an average amount of TV during my high school years, but I missed V somehow so I can't compare the new one to the original.

I can say that this V is the solid, middle-of-the-road (no faux cable "edginess") TV drama that I happen to enjoy very much. For comparison, I submit Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles and all of those great eighties mini series like World War III.

In V, aliens come down to earth bearing gifts and beautiful women baring legs to gain our trust (primitive, but hey, it'd work on me).

In case that doesn't work, however, the "Visitors" managed to infiltrate every institution on earth except the media, members of which they have to recruit when they get here.

One of those recruits is Chad Decker (Michael J. Fox look-alike Scott Wolf). Stargate and Firefly alumna Anna (Morena Baccarin) thinks that the press can be manipulated by a pretty face and flattery. In her studies of earth, Anna obviously missed the lesson about our press being impenetrably honest and scrupulously impartial reporters.

Also in the mix are Lost doctor Elizabeth Mitchell as an FBI agent who's skeptical of the V presentation. Her son is the kind of slacker who would have to move out of an Asymmetric household. There's a brother lizard on the inside and a priest.

I liked:

1. One of the first scenes is really quite inspired. Usually, in these invasion movies, you have the military discover a blip on the radar and contact the president who then authorizes an ineffective response. At the beginning of V, we just see the end result- an F-16 fighter crashing into a building and its pilot floating down onto the street.

2. Seeing out-of-work sci-fi stars get a gig.

I didn't like:

1. The teen dumminess and nerd humor (laughing at them).

Overall, worth a second night of watching.

Politics/Message:

During the TV interview with Decker, evil hot lizard-chick, Anna smiles and accuses the reporter of inhibiting "change" and "progress." What kind of progress? Free health care. Decker really perks up at the mere mention of this liberal catnip. For you guys into political allegory:

Obama is a candidate who covers his harmful agenda with his physical attractiveness, smooth words, and grandiose promises (health care); and who intimidates (Fox) or charms (Chris Matthews) the press into giving him positive press coverage. He employs operatives (ACORN) to infiltrate society and enforce a one-world government (like on the V planet). To counter the Vs, earthlings organize into small, underfunded cells (Teabaggers).

The religion aspect is interesting. The priests wonder what the Visitors mean to the faith. The Vatican has spoken on the religious implications of intelligent aliens (without getting too much into it, if aliens have the signs of a soul, being able to distinguish good from evil, they'd have to be evangelized like any other souled being). The movie must have been aware of this statement, as they mention that the aliens are part of God's creation. Anyways, I'm glad they included a positive religious role-model.

The fact that people are positively-inclined towards good-looking people is a good insight.

**update**

I'm no the only one that saw an Obama-V connection.