Movie and Television Reviews

Purchase here

Kalifornistan is about a poseur Muslim terrorist (Nick Nyon) in Los Angeles who becomes obsessed with a nameless “brown” stripper (Govindini Murty) while trying to detonate a nuclear bomb. A bounty hunter (John Barrett) employed by a Blackwater-like organization called Blackshnauzer thwarts the terrorist’s plans by taking advantage of the terrorist’s incompetent associates and weakness for women- he’s eventually nabbed while buying a Christmas present for “the girl.”

Chimpie McHitler (George Bush) sends him to Guantanamo. He escapes and returns to LA where he exacts revenge on the bounty hunter, seeks the girl, and encounters both her and her Viagra-munching White boyfriend.

Kaliforniastan is befuddling.

The trailer made me think that Kalifornistan is a comedy that mocks terrorists in the un-PC, conservative way that we never get from mainstream movies, like An American Carol. It is, partly.

An American Carol [Blu-ray]

The humor is two-note, mainly consisting of the mundane thoughts and concerns of a person with delusions of terrorist grandeur, unaware of his incompetence and relative unimportance. He streams paranoid, conspiracy-fueled hatreds of American society in general and in particular, with a focus on George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Republicans, White people (redundant, I know), commercialism, and women. Kalifornistan also features plays on names like “blackshnauzer,” “Glorious Jihad of Kalifornistan” (GJK), and “National Agency for the Defense of a Secure Homeland Against Foreign Treachery” (NADSHAFT). Those two notes aren’t poorly-played. When the terrorist chastises his assimilating cousin for stealing money and continuously hums indistinguishable Middle Eastern tunes, it’s funny. His phallic pride combined with his fear of women is both amusing and crucial to the film’s attraction. Kalifornistan plays a murder and an attempted rape for laughs.

Jason Apuzzo chooses to tell the story through the amateur footage of the terrorist, a device used in Cloverfield and Blair Witch; and Apuzzo’s not kidding.

The Blair Witch Series

Cloverfield [Blu-ray]

It’s this aspect of the movie that confuses: Either the movie is lampooning the first-person camera technique or its one of the least-disciplined movies I’ve ever seen.

Who’s holding the camera? Why is the footage in black and white? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to distinguish between the times the terrorist holds the camera and normal action by having only the terrorist footage in B&W? Instead, the only color we see is the girl waking up. Why?

Some of the situations make no sense. The girl’s boyfriend goes after the terrorist in his car. Couldn’t he have called the police while driving? It wasn’t against the law in 2007.

When the boyfriend doesn’t arrive, the girl goes after him...and finds him! In Los Angeles! How does she know where he is? Why does she leave in high heels?

An intact film was found in radioactive rubble? Is the girl's Christianity relevant?

I’m willing to accept that he bumbles his way off of Guantanamo like the protagonists in Dumb and Dumber accidentally solve a crime, but nobody having names except for the never-seen Azam is unacceptable.

Dumb and Dumber (Unrated) [Blu-ray]

At times it approaches conventional movie-making- you know, with a real plot. The bounty hunter part of the story begins well, with him thwarting his own murder and getting releasing the assailant for a $50,000 check (the funniest moment in the film is when the bounty hunter asks, “you brought your checkbook?”). He captures the terrorist, gets beaten up upon the terrorist’s return, and then, nothing. We don’t see him again. Why focus our attention on the bounty hunter if he’s to play no role in the film’s climax or resolution? Shouldn’t he intersect with the girl at some point?
Wouldn’t it have been better if the terrorist’s captured after the girl overpowers him and then returns to exact his revenge upon her?

Only a Tarantino should even attempt such disjointed film-making.

Overall, Kalifornistan peaks at the sexual assault (not graphic) and I maintained a high level of interest up until the mentioned chase scene when the thriller aspect of the movie kind of falls apart for its lack of internal logic. Worse, I'm afraid that these lapses aren't so much an attempt as artistry as just screenwriting laziness.

With all of its faults, Kalifornistan is worth watching for two insights: that terrorists may be driven by a sense of sexual frustration. This point comes through so clearly that the Apuzzo didn’t have to give us an on-screen statistic. And, that even dumb terrorists are dangerous.

Oh, performances are fine, music’s good, and the direction doesn’t look amateurish.

Politics/Message:

The two insights above plus an indirect satire at the deranged Bush-haters those of us who follow politics suffered through for seven years.

I'm a conservative (Cu-con). Govindini and Apuzzo are Libertarians, I think. I know they're open to conservative ideas from their association with the Liberty Film Festival. I wanted to like this movie on these grounds, and did. This isn't going to be a game-changer for explicitly conservative film, however. I hope they keep making movies and come out with something fine next time.

What a pleasure it was to sit and watch Sherlock Holmes. No lasers, super-powers, political agendas, 3-D effects. Just a rollicking tale, well-acted and directed.

Well, OK, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) is a super-hero of the James Bond, semi-realistic kind; except that Sherlock trades the ability to bed foreign spies for a more-developed sense of perception and steel-trap logic.

And, the scenes of Sherlock deducing stuff are as good as one could have hoped for. Sherlock driven nearly mad at a restaurant by his uncontrollable ability to notice minute details really shows how accursed this aptitude might be, a premise I don't remember from the older movies. His working himself into an almost trance-like state to piece together the amassed clues further illuminates this interesting perspective.

We also get to see Sherlock rough it up a bit. His smarts applied to martial combat is a nice touch.

Little dandiness, however. This Sherlock is a lonely, eccentric rogue with a gift that makes relating to others challenging.

SH begins with Sherlock interrupting a Lord Blackwell's ritual murder of a beautiful maiden and then reels off an effective extended character exposition of Sherlock and Dr. Watson, focusing in part on their queer co-dependence.

The only woman Sherlock's loved, the Victorian hottie Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), enters the picture when we're quite familiar with the duo to ask Sherlock's help in tracking down a midget.

From there, Sherlock uses his powers to find and check the apparently resurrected Lord Blackwell, who convinces a Masonic-like order to attempt a take-over of Britain and, from there, the world.

It's all good fun, even if it doesn't reach a level of super-intensity. It's better than the similar National Treasure movies, anyways. Like in NT, I liked the historical allusions. Britain dominating the world wasn't completely outside of the pale in the mid 1860s and the writers explain how the American Civil War makes an English conquest possible.

Robert Downey continues his scorched-earth comeback, imbuing Sherlock Holmes with a deep charisma. Jude Law as Watson is fine. Mark Watson makes a convincing pre-Black Sabbath Satanist.

SH unabashedly dips into the bag of cinema tricks to pull out the slightly differently-perspectived or new-scened flashbacks that both explain the plot and make us feel inferior to Sherlock for not being able to notice the things genius detectives do.

If I can fault the movie, it's perhaps in its romantic sub-plots. The movie goes not for a love triangle, but a love pentagram. The Sherlock-Adler one is fine, if little under-cooked. The concept of a lover who's also a rival is solid and Downey's acting does give one the sense that she's the only woman who can fluster him. Sherlock seems to find her nude-ness distracting. They hug, kiss once. Yet, we never see them close to passion. I don't want to over-emphasize this aspect of the movie. It's not bad, certainly doesn't ruin the film, and understandably incomplete considering the restricted screen time. In fact, forget I brought it up.

Watson has a fiance who's essentially a prop.

Sherlock and Watson give off a borderline-gay vibe. Their dialogue seems unrealistic unless unless seen this way: I don't think real guys bicker about waistcoats and try to ruin the other's relationships with the opposite sex.

Politics/Message:

The Masonic cult wants to seize power to help the teeming, ignorant masses who'd be lost without their enlightened guidance. Know any political parties with that attitude?

Not too much besides that: Friendship, loyalty, I guess.

Read more »

Tags: homosexual

FernGully: The Last Rainforest (Family Fun Edition)

If he were to read the IMDB reviews, an astute reader would be able to divide the admirers of Avatar into those who believe in its message and those who like pretty pictures. I'd like to add a new category for myself, who enjoyed Avatar not as a movie, but as an anthropological experiment.

If James Cameron is correct and our planet "dies," and the dude next to me right now at the Norm's counter is right and advanced aliens exist, one can imagine the aliens coming back to earth and wanting to familiarize themselves with our society and its political factions, one of which is made up of those late-twentieth/early-twenty-first century creatures called "progressives."

The databases of Daily Kos and Huffington Post having long been gone, and the pages of the Nation having been burned for warmth after the disappearance of the carbon fuels; the aliens may come to rely solely on a copy of Avatar found in the vault of one of James Cameron's mansions.

What they would learn:

1. It's not good to encroach on other people's territory and change its culture or use its resources. The Earthlings in Avatar have made bad ecological decisions and attempt to steal the Na'vi's supply of unobtanium.

Earthlings shouldn't take unobtanium even if it's their only chance for survival, which seems to go against the natural Eywan law of survival (below). Cameron's going to have to work this one out.

Anyways, humans had their chance to elect Al Gore and they blew it. Now humanity can go lay in its apocalyptic bed.

2. War is justified to protect one's homeland. Similar to the traditional Christian Just War theory.

3. Religion is good, as are priestesses. It's appropriate to appreciate the source of balance on Pandora, the goddess Eywa; therefore, ceremonies are good. It's important to note that Eywa (the "Mother"- in your eye, patriarchists!) may just be some unconscious, material, biological phenomenon, like the microorganisms Midi-chlorians are responsible for the Force in Star Wars. This would seem to make the Eywa dances lively entertainments, but ultimately useless, unless achieving a trance-like state allows one to better "commune with Eywa."

Star Wars Trilogy

Star Wars Prequel Trilogy

Religion should represent reality so that if there really is a force that balances Pandora, and no authority above the planet, that force should be the one to follow. However, since Cameron made Pandora himself, one may assume that it's the kind of religion he prefers. That kind is a sort of pantheistic spiritual communion amongst bio-entities in which the ultimate good is that living things bother each other as minimally as possible. Gluttony is out, moderation evident in the svelte Na'vi physiques.

Even with that understanding, Pandora is still a pretty dangerous place where one wrong move in the dangerous forest, even in dealings with their fellow creatures, can lead to death for the Na'vi. Viciousness is natural, necessary to "maintain the balance." Eywa approves.

Interestingly, for being such a peaceful people, there sure are a lot of Na'vi warriors. Perhaps the different tribes war against each other.

4. Na'vi don't seem to care about improving their technology. It's implied that Earthlings destroyed their planet pursuing technology. The big robots seem especially grotesque next to the colorful Na'vi dragon steeds.

5. No discernible policy on out-of-wedlock sex. Small Na'vi villages tend to be conservative. Perhaps in the bigger villages, "if this leaf-hammock's a rockin', don't come a knockin'."

6. Gay marriage is out. At the appropriate age, a man chooses a woman, for "mating." That's the imprimatured way on earth.

Mating is for life. Another orthodox belief.

7. It's not necessary to love one's enemies. In fact, Avatar is full of hate. First, Earthlings towards the Na'vi. Then, the Na'vi right back. After stripping Earthlings of their capacity to harm, the Na'vi probably could have worked something out with the defeated remnants. Nope. "Go home to your dead world" (not just Detroit, either- all of Earth).

8. Free health care. It seems like the medicine shaman is on call and doesn't require payment. Could be single-payer, which would make them far superior to us.

9. Fashion should allow for the maximum freedom of movement.

10. Slight Xenophobia. Outsiders are not welcome, unless they're willing to completely assimilate.

11. The Na'vi are the ideal people: perfectly in balance; peaceful, yet retaining the ability to wage war.

If this movie is an allegory, then the most noble population group on earth are either Native Americans or Africans. My friends and I argued about this. I kept an eye out for a loincloth malfunction to decide the matter. Alas, none. Fortunately, Stephen Lang settles the issue. They're "Indians":

12. Americans are bad. When anti-American film-makers want to present a fighting force for good, they either internationalize a group like in GI Joe, downplay its Americanism like in Superman, or make it explicitly anti-American like in the Bourne Identity.

The Bourne Trilogy (The Bourne Identity | The Bourne Supremacy | The Bourne Ultimatum) [Blu-ray]

Superman Returns [Blu-ray]

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

In Avatar, all of the bad guys are Americans.

(This is a financial decision. Only half of a Hollywood release's revenue comes from within Yankee shores. Studios figure they can more than make up for offended patriots- who probably don't go to movies much anyways- by appealing to foreign anti-Americans while getting a majority of the Huffington Post crowd, keeping in my mind that most Americans probably won't understand what's going on. In its first weekend, Avatar's overseas business was much greater than domestic revenue.)

13. Marines are good on Earth where they fight for freedom (Cameron makes a point of saying this, so it's not really fair to say that he's anti-military), but bad on Pandora because of point #1. Context is everything.

14. Marines are just the muscle for corporations, which makes corporations the real heavies for their pursuit of profit above peaceful peoples.

Tags: anti-christian, avatar theology, theology of avatar

I haven't seen the special on the History channel (because the man doesn't want Cuban people to know the Truth! [just kidding]), but I've read most of the book upon which it's based. Reading Howard Zinn is like listening to eulogy, in reverse. Imagine going to a funeral and hearing a somber gentleman recount the times the recently departed Mr. Jones looked down Mrs. Smith's blouse and took peanuts from the Ralphs display instead of how Mr. Jones' cared for his ill wife for forty years and donated million of dollars to cancer research. That's what Howard Zinn (Hitchens does this as well in God isn't Great) does in the People's History of the United States: He picks what he perceives as the worst parts of American history and shoehorns it into his Marxist boot to create a narrative that reads:

America started off as an evil conspiracy amongst rich white men to enrich themselves further. Slowly but surely, however: leftists, atheists, Communists, feminists, and minorities chipped away at that power structure until the rich white men (very) reluctantly gave in to the pressure and allowed a measure of justice. The victories came at great cost to the heroic coalition of the oppressed and if their vigilance flags, white men stand at the ready to take away the vote of women and re-enact slavery. Much more needs to be done to achieve a truly just society like China, Palestine, Sweden, Cuba, and Madison, Wisconsin.

Read more »

Tags: "conservative review", "howard zinn debunk", "list of zinn lies", "review howard zinn history channel", "zinn special lies", documentary, rebutt zinn", review

Description of The Lovely Bones, from Wiki:

In 1973, Susie Salmon (Ronan) is murdered by a neighbor, George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), a serial killer of young girls and women. She finds herself in 'the in-between' a Heaven-like place, observing her family as they grieve for her. She also watches her killer who, having covered his tracks successfully, is preparing to murder again. Susie struggles to balance her desire for vengeance on Harvey and her desire to have her family recover from their loss.

The name for that "in-between" is "Purgatory."* I haven't seen the movie, but if Susie watches in agony, then her experience in the description can be a kind of spiritual cleansing ("burning anger," perhaps).

Reading the description got me to thinking about how Hollywood sometimes fudges afterlife orthodoxy for cinematic effect.

First, let's get the orthodoxy correct: According to traditional Christian teaching- and without talking about what people have to do to get to heaven- people die, are judged by our Lord, and then either condemned to Hell or experience eternal bliss in Heaven.

According to Hollywood:

1. People die and then go to Heaven where, after doing a good deed, they become angels (It's a Wonderful Life).

Wrong: God created angels before men. They're purely spiritual beings who were never people and will never become people. Neither will any people ever become angels. Lucifer, the guy on your left shoulder who told you to download Wolverine, is a fallen angel.

Right: There's an angel right next to you right now, guarding.

2. Mortals can condemn people to Hell (Drag Me to Hell).

Wrong: God makes that decision.

Right: Your Black Sabbath-loving roommate can set you on the path to Hell, or your crazy aunt brings a Ouija board and convinces you to invite demons who tell you to do wicked stuff which buys you a one-way ticket. So, indirectly, OK.

3. Overzealous angels wrongly take dead souls to Heaven. Cremated bodies cannot be restored (Heaven Can Wait).

Wrong: I'm pretty sure that Angels have stringent quality control measures about this stuff. It's true that anti-clerical forces during the Enlightenment encouraged cremation to explicitly deny the Christian belief in a bodily resurrection. It's also the case that those proto-Christophobes were wrong in thinking that the physical body needed to be preserved for resurrection to occur. Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty) needn't have gone through the trouble.

Read more »

Tags: "accurate christian movies", "bad theology in movies", "fake christian", "realistic christian movies", "review lovely bones"

I hadn't regularly watched a TV show in probably 18 years (Cheers? A-Team?) when a fellow soldier approached me in Iraq with the Stargate SG1 season-one DVD box.

"You look kind of bored. Check this out."

Hook, line, and sinker. I eventually watched every episode, sticking with the series through several "jump the shark" moments: the loss of Daniel Jackson, "Space Race" (second worst episode after the one where the kids lose their memory), the introduction of supernatural elements like "ascension," the Ori thing that never really worked. Through all of that, the show maintained its sense of humor, great characterization, and solid story lines.

Stargate Atlantis was a great show through and through. Loved every episode.

Because my wife and son shared my enthusiasm, Stargate means family, hot chocolate, fun, domestic warmth.

Now we have Stargate Universe, and I, with deep regret, have made the decision not to dive into this wormhole.

The producers of Stargate, in trying to mature the franchise, managed to lose everything that makes the first two series great while adding nothing but eye-rolling pretension.

The last episode of Stargate Universe I saw was "Light" (eye roll: the first episodes have one-word, "elemental" titles).

"Light" is the worst sci-fi episode I've seen in a long time, even rivaling the space junk that makes up the last two seasons of Battlestar Galactica.

The drama is thick, yet nothing much happens. All we get is longing stares that come before, during, and after characters make "tough" decisions. The direction is lugubrious. The treacly piano music too sappy for a Hallmark channel special on a family dealing with [insert disease].

Destiny is going into a sun and the captain has to choose the survivors. He picks a pilot, a medic, and holds a lottery for the rest of the seats.

Yeah? So what?

That happens every week in SG1 and Atlantis, in the episodes where the whole earth doesn't face extinction. Indeed, certain death is downright mundane on every sci-fi show, and you don't see anybody else making a big deal out it. Sure, Captain Kirk might agonize (for a few minutes!) over sending Spock on a suicide mission, but there'd be other stuff going on, and nobody would complain: Heck, they'd be fighting to take his place.

Any conflict in this stinker? Well, one guy protests, but Greer puts him down with one blow. That's it. The rest is people holding hands and talking into a camera.

Yes, saying their final goodbyes. Stargate writers already used the "saying 'goodbye' into a camera for posterity trick" in Stargate Atlantis. It's kind of funny there. It's also somewhat touching because we already know the characters. In "Light," it's derivative and fails to stir any emotion at all.

In the most blatant example of sci-fi cheating since the resurrection of Spock, Nicholas Rush happens to stow some "communication stones" aboard the Destiny before the planet they were on blows up. I guess the U.S. Air Force just leaves rocks capable of calling people at the edge of the Universe in the scientists' lounge. OK, well, what do the writers plan on using these stones? They're going to let crew members visit their families so that we can have further buckets-full of melodrama.

Then, there's the "groundbreaking" stuff. It's race in Star Trek. "Strong women," next. Both sexes showering together in Starship Troopers and BG. In 2009, ground-breaking means homosexuality. Actually, in sci-fi, it just means lesbianism. Recently, we've had lesbians in BG and Firefly.

Why?

Well, who watches sci-fi? That's right, young guys. Strait guys don't like to see male homosexuality. Solution, lesbians. You get your progressive, groundbreaking, PC cred while titillating most of your audience (and probably not even that- guys might like to watch lesbians, but which one reads about their relationship ups and downs?), and turning off few.

Call me whatever you want, I don't like it in my sci-fi (and, no, I don't think it's like the racists who didn't like Uhura). This is especially true if I have to watch gay relationships develop and wane. And, triply true if such relationships are the centerpiece of the show. And edge-of-universe true if the show has no other redeeming qualities.

Thanks for the memories, Stargate. It's been one heck of a ride. I must be getting off now.

Tags: "compare stargate", "sgu sucks"