The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Rated PG-13 (beheadings and 'splosions)
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Written by: Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro (Screenplay), J.R.R. Tolkien (Novel, "The Hobbit")
**1/2 out of ****

You have no excuses to not know this story. None. If you didn't see "The Lord of The Rings", you are a liar, and if you didn't read "The Hobbit", you had an awful childhood that should have been rectified by this point.

I'm not going to recount the story, really. It's in the damn subtitle. There's a battle, and it involves five armies. Also, a dragon.

I know that Jackson and company added some characters and changed a few details, but, overall, the adaptation is fairly faithful. And yet, only 2 1/2 stars.

The acting is fine. You couldn't have found a better actor to play a young Bilbo Baggins. Richard Armitage is a handsome, brooding King Under the Mountain. There are other dwarves and people, but... Well, let's let Bilbo say what the problem is.

"I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."

That's basically the problem with "The Hobbit" trilogy. It shouldn't have been one. It should have been two movies - The Shire to The Desolation of Smaug, and then The Battle of the Five Armies. Gandalf vs. The Witch King of Angmar should be a separate movie all together.

And, sadly, Peter Jackson had to make the movies. He didn't even want to in the first place. Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro were on the short-list to helm it, but, due to lawsuits and licensing taking forever, del Toro wound up dropping out because he had other productions to deal with. (One of which was "Pacific Rim", so, I'm not too sad.)

You can feel that Jackson's heart simply wasn't in these. Especially in the first two, not so much in this one, but, that's because character building has already happened, and now it's time for the payoff.

From a technical standpoint, wow. Just seeing how much technology has progressed since LOTR is stunning. There did seem to be some strange frame-rate or resolution issues going on, however. The battles were huge, and had even better choreography than in the original trilogy, but, they felt less intimate. Faramir trying to save Osgiliath was brutal, but felt intimate.  Thorin and some other dwarves (seriously, there were too damn many dwarves, and didn't have strong enough personalities for me to tell which was which. There was Old Beard, Time Bandit Hat, Baldy McTattoo, Braided Beard, Young Handsome Dwarf, and I'm sure several others.) taking on orcs was equally brutal, and even better visually, but, meh. Even with beheadings, it just lacked the emotional heft.

Is this movie bad? No. Far from it. It's just... I'm sure Jackson is tired, and would REALLY like to move on.

Interstellar

I am dictating this, rather than typing it, both to try something new, and because my computer is broken.

If you wanted to make a movie that would just give me the biggest boner you've ever seen, it would be interstellar.

Quotation marks 2001: a Space Odyssey quotation marks is the greatest movie ever made in my opinion. Not only science fiction, but movie in general. It is tough to overstate if impact culturally artistically and cinematically. Kubrick and Clarke busted the doors wide open. And now, every science fiction movie has to measure up to that. Not every science fiction movie needs to. Obviously some have different goals. Alien, for example, was essentially a monster movie but grounded in theoretical biology. Blade Runner ask the question of what it actually means to be human. 2001 was a monster movie, questioned what we were, asked where we came from, and suggested where we could go.

Christopher Nolan's interstellar does not shy away from this. It recognizes that it can't just ignore the elephant in the room. And not just the elephant of 2001. It also recognizes that Disney play a role.

I really don't want to get into the plot too much. It's really good. The story is one that hit me all over the place. The challenge with interstellar, and any really good sci-fi, is to connect humanity with sometimes very abstract scientific ideas. Blade Runner was the Turing test wrapped inside a detective story. 2001 replaced the notion of God with the concept of a species vastly more evolved than humanity. Interstellar explorers the effects of relativity on families. Relativity for relatives.

What is time? What is gravity? Why are these two phenomena connected? Why are we only able to receive three dimensions when we know that more exist? Is Christopher Nolan comfortable with questions of time because he's British and there's been a blue police box in his cultural psyche for 50 years? No, seriously. Time gets wibbly wobbly, and it works dramatically.

Design wise, you have to recognize the design of the robots. Clearly, they hearken back to 2001 and its monolith. But you also have to notice the naming conventions. It is been ages since I have seen the movie, but one of my favorite parts of an older sci-fi flick was the robots, V.I.N.C.E.N.T. and Old B.O.B. Here, we have T.A.R.S. and C.A.S.E. When I made that connection, oh boy did I smile.

Another huge influence on Interstellar is Steven Spielberg. Close in counters of the third kind is represented big and bad. And I loved it. I don't mind being emotionally manipulated if it's done skillfully.

So, what we have here, is christopher nolan love letter to stanley kubrick, steven spielberg, and to quantum physics. This movie needs to be seen in the theater. I'm going to stop now because I can just go on forever.

Big Hero 6

Big Hero 6
Rated PG ('splosions, death)
Directed by: Don Hall and Chris Williams
Written by: Jordan Roberts and Don Hall (story), Jordan Roberts, Daniel Gerson and Robert L. Baird (Screenplay), Man of Action (concept and characters)
*** out of ****

Cute.

That's how I would describe this 'un.

Cute.

It's not a knock against it at all. It's a good family flick, it is superbly paced, it has just the right amount of drama (it's not a Pixar flick, so you probably won't cry (not like I ever have at a Pixar movie))... It's... It's cute. It plays it safe.

Big Hero 6 is loosely based on a comic of the same name that I'm not familiar with. It's a Marvel movie, but not part of the MCU. So, you don't have to worry about figuring out if that thing you saw out of the corner of your eye was a reference to Thanos. The premise is this: Hiro (ha!), the protagonist (but not Hiro Protagonist), is a genius. He makes and fights robots as a hobby. His older brother goes to school to study robotics with his nerd friends with clever nicknames (Wasabi, GoGo, Honey Lemon and Fred). Hiro develops microbots that act as a swarm after being inspired by seeing what his brother did: making a medical robot named Baymax. Baymax is inflatable vinyl around a carbon fiber core, and can diagnose and treat pretty much any physical ailment. He helps. The microbots could help, swarming to transport things, build things, what have you. Disaster strikes, the microbots are used for EVIL, and the adventure begins.

I'm not 8, but, if I were, I'd be WAY down with this movie. I'd be down harder for this than I was for Short Circuit. I think that this will age FAR better than that did.

Characters, story, it's nothing that you haven't seen before (not that that's a bad thing, mind you). It's not Iron Giant, but doesn't try to be. It's not the gleeful exercises that The Goonies or The Adventures of Tin-Tin were, and that's OK, too. It's OK to be small sometimes. Leave some room for the sequels.

As far as I am concerned, Pixar is the gold standard for computer animation. What they do is simply phenomenal from a technical standpoint. Disney owns Pixar, but this is not a Pixar movie, although some of the work is stunning.

Watch some of the virtual camera work. Very nice things done with "lenses". Especially watch the swarms in action. I don't know how many polygons they were pushing, but the way they moved was fascinating, especially when other actors were in the frame. Very herky-jerky stop-motion, which is, I suspect, how they would actually move in reality.

It's not the triumph that The Lego Movie was, but it's far from a disaster. If you are a fan of animation as an art form, you should definitely see it. Great work with translucency and texturing.

Hercules

Brett Ratner's Hercules!

That's what I could have called this, but, sadly, I am unable to. It's clearly what he was going for, but, as his oeuvre, he was unable to pull it off.

I'm breaking my format here, because, in order to address this flick, I need to spoil the hell out of the movie.

If you're planning on seeing it, or don't want spoilers because it might be on Netflix some rainy Sunday afternoon and you've run out of series to bingewatch, Ima give it ** out of ****. That's generous, but there were some moments that made me laugh out loud.

For the rest of you...

I'm sure you've seen other reviews that said the movie was a dirty lie. That all the monster fights are in the first 5 minutes. And, those reviews are correct. Well (Can you read that "Well," in the Tenth Doctor's voice? Because I totally did in my head.), not the part about the movie being a dirty lie. Well (Keep the Tennant up, please (Ladies).), I mean, it IS a lie, in that it's a work of fiction, and, well, perhaps the trailers WERE misleading, a bit. But, that's because they were trying to tell a different Hercules story. And, if they told you that from the outset, WELL, would you have gone?

NOW, the story that they're telling us not the one of Hercules being the son of Zeus (I'm rusty on my mythology (which is what we call religions that aren't practiced anymore), but was Hercules sired while Zeus was a swan or bull? Also, damn. Ancient Greek women be fuh-reeks!).

The story is one that, in theory, is much more interesting. In the right hands. Which these aren't.

Here, Herc is a mercenary. With a team. And a tragic backstory. Yes, he did do the tasks laid before him (slaying the Hydra, killing a big ol' boar, killing a big ol' lion, seducing the hell out of an Amazon), but, his sidekicks did just as much work as he did. The myth is promoted by Herc's nephew, both as a means of securing work and demoralizing the enemy.

This is all very interesting, but it would be even MORE interesting if Hercules didn't actually kick ass physically. Like, if he was big and handsome, but, like, crazy nearsighted with a genius for guerrilla military tactics. But, nope. He's awesome on his own. So, at the end, when Ian McShane tells him to become the truth behind the myth, it's anticlimactic. Of COURSE he can break those chains. He's Hercules.

So, there's one change that needed to happen.

Another is this: You have Ian McShane as a possibly drug-addicted seer. You have John Hurt as an elderly, apparently weak and possibly incompetent king. You, Brett Ratner, don't tell them to chew the absolute HELL out of the scenery? Cripes, man! When you have great actors and let them go to town, you get gold. Kevin Spacey was the absolute best Lex Luthor. Gene Wilder was the best Willy Wonka. I defy you to find a better actor for Wormtongue than Brad Dourif. So what if Dwayne Johnson can't keep up? Know what? I bet he could. He was a professional wrestler. The best rasslers are BRILLIANT scenery gourmands. Can you see Ric "The Nature Boy" Flair or "Macho Man" Randy Savage playing their roles with subtlety? "The Rock" was one of the most popular rasslers in his era. I bet he could hang.

Thirdly, let the characters grow. You're using Greek mythology as a starting point, and the Greeks codified drama. Let's see Hercules be bold in a fight, but timid around other people, becoming who he is meant to be when the chips are down. Let's see John Hurt be conniving and sinister, but only after he thinks he's won. Until then, oh, he's just a frail, old man. It's not that tough.

Fourthly, if you're going to base part of your tale on "The Seven Samurai", spend more time on that part. We need to care about these people, both the heroes and the peasants. You did do a good job with the trap that you sent them into before they were fully trained, but, Hercules and King Hurt (I'm too lazy to look up the character's name) to play that scene with more gravitas. (I'm aware that I'm advocating melodrama and real drama in the same movie, but, I'm certain that I know what I'm taking about.) Don't just throw that scene away. Remember: we need to care about these people.

Also, if you're making a sword-and-sandals flick, for the love of Pete, bust out the big lenses. And use more practical effects.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Rated PG-13 (violence, mild language, allegory)
Directed by: Matt Reeves
Written by: Mark Bomback (story), Rick Jaffe and Amanda Silver (story and characters), and Pierre Boulle (novel "La Planète des Singes")
*** 1/2 out of ****

"All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again." -  Battlestar Galactica

I went to this flick because I thought it would at least LOOK good. I wasn't expecting a think piece, but, here we are.

I love science fiction. It shows us what we can be, but, as Rod Serling showed us, it's even better at showing us what we ARE.

What's the movie about? It's a sequel to a reboot that I haven't seen.

Apes, under the leadership of a chimpanzee named Caesar (Andy Serkis), think that humans are extinct. "Ten winters. Two without seeing them," intones Maurice (Karen Konoval), an orang-utan teacher. The Apes have a good life. A village, fire, food, a home. A future. Maurice teaches the children the Laws of the Apes. The chief law is "Ape does not kill Ape." Caesar's son, Blue-Eyes (Nick Thurston) is one of his students. He's also a teenager. Caesar's best friend is Koba (Toby Kebbell), a former lab chimpanzee, who bears the scars of "human work".

The humans that live in San Francisco are running out of fuel. Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) sends an expedition to a nearby hydroelectric dam. The group, led by Malcolm (Jason Clarke) crosses paths with Blue-Eyes and his friend. A shot is fired in panic and anger, and... You can see where this is going.

I started with a quotation from the 2004 version of "Battlestar Galactica" for a reason. Because it's fitting.

I'm watching the movie, which opens with Apes and subtitles. I'm sold before we even get to the post-apocalyptica (which I love).

But, as the story moves forward, bits of the amateur scientist in my brain get activated.

Homo Sapiens is the dominant hominid species on the planet, but we weren't (and possibly still aren't) (not to get into Bigfoot bullcrap) always the only ones.

Let's say that h. sapiens comes across h. neanderthalensis. One is smarter (we think), one is stronger (we know). What happens? Do we fight? Humans love fighting. Do we  fuck? Humans love fucking almost more than we love fighting. Do we, dare I dream, try to communicate and coexist?

All three probably happened, but, eventually, we "won".

The original film (the one with Charlton Heston and the damn dirty apes) was obviously an allegory for race relations. This one doesn't shy away from it. Koba bears the scars, memories and hatred of his servitude. Caesar had a different upbringing, and has different ideas about how humans are. In a couple of scenes, Koba actually employs minstrelry to fool humans. Very clever, and very, very angry.

Language was addressed, but not as well as I would have liked. Amongst themselves, the Apes used sign language,  with grunts and rumbles for emphasis. With humans, some chimpanzees had a limited verbal vocabulary. Short, declarative sentences. I don't know if the crew studied chimpanzee anatomy and the films of the "talking chimps" of the early 20th century or not, but, for the most part, the words that they used seemed physically possible.  Sadly, this fell apart towards the end.

One thing I really liked was the fact that the "noble savage" archetype was avoided. The Apes didn't need the White Man to save them, or one of their own to show them the path to salvation. An uneasy truce is the best that can be hoped for.

I don't want to say that the filmmakers are being cynical, but, it seems that war is inevitable. The people in power, or who want to be in power, while they think they have the best interests of society at heart, are short-sighted, selfish and genocidal. But, regardless of our fear of "The Other", we need hope.

One big question is: at least in the world of the movie, does humanity need to survive? The Apes are doing just fine. They've adapted to their new world. They have fire, food, water, shelter and family. Humanity needs technology. The Apes have tools, but humanity had forgotten how to make them. We can repair what we have, but we can no longer create.

At every They Might Be Giants show I've been to, the band divides the audience into "Apes" and "Humans", and, while the band jams, the audience shouts their allegiance. The Apes always win.

Godzilla (for crazy people)

Godzilla
No stars.

This movie was disgusting. Absolutely depraved. The audience is left wondering if we are just as monstrous as the blasphemously named creature.

The gay agenda, the pro-abortionists, the LIE-berals, they will eat this trash right up.
First of all, the HollyJews cast Bryan Cranston, a man who is known for playing "men" who are unable to provide adequately for their families.

Then, they make the American Military, the only reason that we are free, look completely incompetent. Not only are the weapons useless against the monsters, the people behind this garbage have the audacity to claim that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was a bad idea. Do you know how many people that saved? It saved you, for one. (If you can call living in this day and age "living", what with our morals going down the toilet)

But what really sickens me is how the movie ends.

G*dzilla (I don't want to risk blasphemy any more than I have to) is chasing a monster that only wants to meet his wife.

This MUTO wants to raise a family. A stable, loving, and, most importantly, HETEROSEXUAL family.

G*dzilla wants to stop this. And where does this happen?

In San Francisco, of course.

That's right. This beast kills a heterosexual family in San Francisco. And a member of the new gay military kills the children.

It doesn't end there. Of course not.

The depraved citizens of New Sodom actually cheer the giant sin monster after he kills the heterosexual monsters. And the lamestream media has the gall to name G*dzilla "King of the Monsters".

The gays aren't even trying to hide their agenda against families, traditional values, and America anymore.

Thanks, Obama.

Godzilla

Godzilla
Rated PG-13 (destruction and 'splosions)
Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Written by: Dave Callaham (Story) and Max Borenstein (Screenplay)
***1/2 out of ****

Godzilla is not Pacific Rim, and that's good.   I loved del Toro's love letter to anime for what it was: one hell of a fun time. It was stupid for all the right reasons and in all the right ways. It was giant robots punching giant monsters, it looked great, it had just enough story to... set up the punching? It was a live-action cartoon.

Godzilla was always something more. At its core, it was a cautionary tale about atomic weapons (the dumbest thing we have ever come up with as a species). Yes, the later films were campy, and the rubber suit was laughable, but, he had some sort of dignity.

I think I saw the Roland Emmerich excrement with Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno and an indestructible taxi cab using a free pass, and I still wanted my my money back. There was nothing good about it. I'm still baffled as to how you make a movie with a giant monster in it boring.

I'm hesitant to call this Godzilla a reboot. I mean, it is, but it's not. It's more of a reinterpretation, like Burton's Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (which I thought was hands-down a better movie than the original).

In this latest version, it wasn't humanity's hubris that created monsters. They are ancient, like younger versions of Lovecraft's Great Old Ones. They are creatures that consume radioactivity. When Earth was younger, it was "hotter". As this radiation dissipated, they adapted and went underground or underwater, where the radiation would be more plentiful. Hiroshima didn't make the monsters (and I am trying so hard to not make a Twilight Zone joke here); it merely showed them that pickins were good on the surface again.

In 1999, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) was working at a Japanese nuclear reactor. Some... thing... that looked like an earthquake was heading towards the reactor. Meanwhile, Dr. Ichiro  Serizawa  (Ken Watanabe) found that some... thing... was headed towards Japan from the Philippines. (The two things were the same thing.)

The reactor was destroyed, the town evacuated, and a no-man's-land grew in the quarantine zone.  (Cranston) felt something was fishy, and was arrested for trespassing in the zone. His son Ford  (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) a Navy Lieutenant, had to leave leave to bail him out, flying from San Francisco to Japan. This sets in motion the human part of the story. It's an important distinction.

The core of the story here is not that we make monsters or anything like that. The tale is not a parable or fable. We aren't meant to learn, or change our ways or face dire consequences. It's actually much more... Cynical is the wrong word. So is pessimistic. Realistic? The movie has giant monsters. Not symbolic monsters, not Monsters of the Id. Actual giant monsters.

Godzilla is a force of nature, like a hurricane or a tornado. Earthquakes are not mad at California. Godzilla is not an enemy of humanity. He is, at best, indifferent to us.

That's one of the things that this version gets right. Godzilla's story happens regardless of the story of the human characters.

This isn't to say that the human characters are undeveloped. They aren't. I mean, they aren't the deepest, but, there is enough humanity there to latch on to. Just not enough to hate. There are kids in the movie, but not annoying ones. We aren't subjected to heavy-handed reunion scenes, or emotionally manipulative music cues. There aren't any silly heroics, or sacrifices, or speeches. The movie is not emotionless, though. It is simply matter-of-fact. About giant monsters.

The monsters are not given characters, but we project "good" and "bad" on to them, and I found myself changing allegiances more than once.

The effects are good, as would be expected. Stylistically, however... I don't know if it was a choice, or coincidence, but the digital mattes looked delightfully like the miniatures in the Toho productions. And the scale of the monsters was, thankfully, consistent.

Godzilla wasn't campy, or grim and dark, or overwrought. It was simply, for lack of a better word, good.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Rated PG-13 ('Splosions and guns)

Directed by: Anthony and Joe Russo

Written by: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (screenplay), Ed Brubaker (concept and story), Joe Simon and Stan Lee (comic book)

***1/2 out of ****

THIS is why I love Captain America.

Batman has brains and money, but he's insane. Superman is good, but he's basically a god. (Yes, I know that DC and Marvel take different approaches to their respective superheroes, but I didn't read a whole lot of superhero comics growing up.) There was just... something about Cap that I liked.

I'm sure that you've seen the previous Marvel Cinematic Universe flicks. If not, I'll try to recap them.

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) was a 90-pound weakling when Hitler started doing his stuff in Europe. Steve wanted to help out so damn badly. His best friend, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes (Sebastian Stan) is going to be an amazing soldier, and Steve doesn't want to be stuck being just a stateside volunteer. He won't take "no" for an answer from the enlistment board. His moxie is noticed, and he is put in the "Super Soldier" program (which, due to licensing deals, can't be called what it became by Marvel Studios films. Captain America is Weapon I. Wolverine is Weapon X.). Cap goes to Europe, socks Hitler in the jaw, and loses Bucky.

After being frozen in the North Atlantic for decades, he's "resurrected" by S.H.I.E.L.D., and joins the Avengers Initiative. He helps Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, Thor and Hawkeye beat Loki, and continues working as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent while trying to adjust to the 21st century.

So, now we're here. Cap and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) are sent on a rescue mission. A S.H.I.E.L.D. launch platform was hijacked by pirates. Wait. Cap was sent on the rescue mission. Black Widow was sent on another mission that just so happened to be on the same ship.

This really irritates Cap, and he lets Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) know. Fury doesn't really care. What he doesn't tell Cap is that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been compromised.

Fury tells his best friend, and S.H.I.E.L.D. executive, Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford). An attempt on Fury's life is made by a "ghost" known only as the Winter Soldier.

Then a bunch of stuff blows up.

Marvel really keeps raising the bar with each installment. One helicarrier in "The Avengers"? Let's do three. One kickass woman in the "universe"? That sounds like an awfully small number.

I think I liked this better than" The Avengers". Much like in "Thor: The Dark World", the Marvel team is letting the characters breathe. If you wondered why Black Widow was in The Avengers, you won't after this. Captain America needs a team, and with Black Widow, Nick Fury and Falcon (Anthony Mackie), he has an amazing one. while I'm going to see all of the Marvel Studios movies, I am really interested in seeing where Captain America goes from here.

Captain America is a soldier, yes. But he's not a blind soldier. He is a government agent, yes, but he doesn't fight for the government. Captain America represents the best of America, regardless of politics. Superman fights for Truth, Justice and the American Way, but Captain America IS Truth, Justice and the American Way. His attitude isn't "My country, right or wrong," but "When my country is right, it's right. When it's wrong, it needs to be taken to task."

The Monuments Men

The Monuments Men
Rated PG-13 (It's kind of a war movie, but not like Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down)
Written by: George Clooney and Grant Heslov (Screenplay) and Robert M. Edsel and Bret Wittier (Book)
Directed by: George Clooney
*** out of ****

A quotation attributed to Winston Churchill goes something like this: When asked if he planned to cut funding for the arts to help fund the war against Germany, Churchill replied, "Then what on earth are we fighting for?"  He didn't say it, apparently, but, the sentiment is accurate.

I'm not an artist.  But, I kind of am.  I can't draw, or sculpt, or compose.  I'm told I can sing well, I used to be able to play the violin passably well, and, while I'm not Twain or George Bernard Shaw or Roger Ebert, I do enjoy playing with words.  I like mashing them together, I like making sentences, I like the act of making things that exist in my head exist elsewhere.

I'm not a historian, or an anthropologist, but I do feel strongly that art is what we, as a culture and as a species, are.  We need food, and water, and air.  We need shelter and warmth and sleep.  Do we need art in the same way?  I'd wager that we do.  If it's not necessary, then why do we enshrine it and continue to make it?

I refuse to classify art as "high" or "low".  I've been to The Louvre and seen the "Mona Lisa".  My reaction was "Huh.  There it is."  I've read "Preacher" by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon.  My reaction was "Ho... Holy shit.  Wow."  I think that Philip Glass is the greatest composer of the last 100 years, and I think that "Surfin' Bird" by The Trashmen is the greatest rocknroll song ever written.  Picasso's "Guernica" does nothing for me, but Zdzisław Beksiński draws my dreams.

I thought that we had finally stopped fighting WWII after Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.  Of course, that was more than 15 years ago, back before the History Channel became the Shit We Just Made Up Channel.  As I've gotten older, I've realized that there really are many, many stories to be told, and shouldn't be forgotten.  The Monuments Men is one of these stories, but, in a way, it's about every story.

Frank Stokes (George Clooney) is an art historian.  He learns that Hitler is stealing Europe's art (starting with private Jewish collections, of course) to populate his Führermuseum in Linz, Austria.  (Just a quick aside, the Nazis were unquestionably evil, but, man alive, did they ever have design figured out.  This museum would have been glorious.  Except, you know, for all the evil.)  With the permission of FDR, he assembles a team of, while not exactly Top Men, men of respect in their various fields.  There's James Granger (Matt Damon), another art historian, Richard Campbell (Bill Murray), an architect, Walter Garfield (John Goodman), another architect, Jean Claude Clermont (Jean Dujardin), a French museum curator, and Preston Savitz (Bob Balaban), a choreographer or director (it's not really made clear).  All men who know art, artists, and the importance of the mission: save art, and, thereby, save history.  They are assisted by Sam Epstein (Dimitri Leonidas), a Private from New Jersey by way of Germany and Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett), a French secretary to a Nazi officer, Viktor Stahl (Justus von Dohnányi), who is one of the men "curating" the art for the Party.

The movie obviously takes some dramatic liberties with history, and, while it's packed to the gills with some terrific comic actors, there aren't really than many big laughs.  Which isn't to say that it's grim or dark.  It takes a while for the story to get rolling, but once it finds itself, it goes along just fine.

There are ideas worth fighting and dying for.  Can we say the same about art?  Should we be spending money to preserve art?  Absolutely.

Art is what we are.  It is our legacy.  Cinema is a little more than a century old, and, already, countless films have been lost due to simple chemistry and carelessness.  Television is even newer, and even more documents have been lost for the same reasons.  Paper documents -- poetry, novels, plays, compositions -- are decaying as we speak.  Even digital archival techniques are not completely reliable.  Years ago, the BBC decided to archive its library on laser discs.  When the readers broke down, they had to write computer programs to get the data back off of the discs.  Things like this are simply inevitable.  Cuneiform clay tablets have held up better than a healthy chunk of the history of the Industrial Era.  But, when you deliberately destroy art, you are destroying an entire culture.  The loss of the Library of Alexandria set our species back thousands of years.  Hitler (riding high on a wave of nationalism that started well before he came along) wanted to, if not re-write history to benefit Germany, destroy history.  It's a road that humanity has traveled down before.  Banning languages (German, Navajo, etc. in America), stealing or destroying "pagan" symbols in Latin America and elsewhere, by destroying the art and the language of a culture, you destroy the culture, and, thankfully, we seem to be waking up to that fact. 

And, speaking of art, man, Europe is just beautiful.  I wish that Clooney had taken a cue from Tarantino when filming France in springtime.  War is hell, yes, but, sometimes even destruction can be beautiful.

RoboCop

RoboCop
Rated PG-13 (Violence, brief language)
Directed by: José Padilha
Written by: Joshua Zetumer (Screenplay) and Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner (Original screenplay)
**1/2 out of ****

I'd like to tell you a story.  Now, now, don't get antsy, I'm not here to bore you.  Just hear me out.  It's a simple story, but it might just be the most important, nay, the Greatest Story Ever Told.

It's about a man.  Just like you or I.  Just an average man.  But, this man was something, had something, special.  See, he cared.  He cared about you and me.  He cared so much for us, in our little lives, that he laid down his life for us.  He died for us.  

Now, you hear stories like that quite often, don't you?  About people sacrificing themselves for others.  There was the track star who gave up Olympic glory to become a bone marrow donor.  There are the parents who sacrifice for the sake of their children.  So, one man, who loved the world so much, sacrificing his life for us, while it is a big deal, it really isn't terribly uncommon.

But, this man... Well, there's something that makes his sacrifice even neater.  

See, he came back from the dead.  He was resurrected.  And he continued to fight for each and every one of us.  Red and yellow, black and white, for all of us he continued to fight.

His name?

RoboCop.
 

Actually, his name was Officer Alex Murphy, and he was played by Peter Weller.   His deeds were originally chronicled in 1987 by Paul Verhoeven.  Oh, yeah.  And there was a dude named Jesus that you may have heard of, too.  But he wasn't a cyborg.

This new RoboCop... I didn't have a lot of high hopes for it, frankly.  The original was a pretty blatant re-telling of the death and resurrection of Christ (No, really.) in a sci-fi violence wrapper.  I didn't see the original until... last year, maybe?  A while after it came out.  But I liked it.

Is Hollywood out of ideas?  Maybe.  But, during the prologue, my hopes were raised considerably.

Pat Novak (Samuel L. Jackson, who doesn't turn on his Samuel L. Jackson until the end of the movie) is a (presumably) conservative talk show host.  In the future, robotics have advanced considerably.  ED-209s, smaller versions of the ED-209 and even human-sized robots are used to patrol streets, while AI-controlled drone jets patrol the skies.  In other countries. They are used for riot control, for threat assessment, for everything that would normally require the use of human troops.  Novak has a film crew on the streets in Tehran, watching a patrol happen.  The robots are owned and designed by Omnicorp, and (presumably) under the control of, if not the US Military, a private security firm (or, in the parlance of "Metal Gear", a PMC).  What are they doing in Tehran?  Installing "freedom", of course.  When suicide bombers take down a few robots ("We aren't going to kill anyone.  We just want to make sure we get on TV."), the feed is cut by the Pentagon, but Novak explains that this action would normally have killed American Troops, while now we are just out a few robots.  So, why can't we have this kind of security in America, the Greatest Nation in The World?

Mostly because of the actions of one Senator, Hubert Dreyfuss (Zach Grenier).  Dreyfuss asks the president of Omnicorp what a robot would feel if it killed a child.  "Nothing," replies Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton).  That's the problem.  Do we want a security force that has absolutely no emotion?  That carries out actions based solely on threat assessment in a binary language?  

Well, this is a bit of a pickle for Dreyfuss.  His company is missing out on billions of dollars in sales because America isn't on-board with the idea.  So, he goes to his head of prosthetics, Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman), with a proposition: put a man in the suit, and your division (which isn't really a great money-maker for Omnicorp) will get all the funding it needs.  Forever.

The ideal candidate presents itself in Detective Alex Murphy, a family man with a wife and a kid, who is trying to stop a Bad Guy named Antoine Vallon (Patrick Garrow) and some possibly Corrupt Cops.  A bomb is placed on Murphy's car, which then explodes, which results in severe injuries.  The Only Hope for Survival is, of course, the robot body.

The movie started out really, really strongly.  This remake went away from the Christ story and updated it to reflect today.  The ethics of drone strikes, the meaning of humanity, the nature of free-will, all really, really juicy topics.  "You aren't your body," Norton tells a man who lost both of his arms.  "You are your mind, and your arms are simply tools."  An artificial arm that transmits sensation was just revealed this past week or so, so we are getting close to the future presented here.  "Now, play," Norton tells the man.  The man picks up a guitar, and begins playing a flamenco tune flawlessly.  Until he gets into it, and his emotions start making his new arms fail.  "Just relax.  Don't get so emotional," Norton tells the man.

"I can't play without emotion," is his reply.

So, we have one aspect of the nature of humanity: emotion.  And the filmmakers start to address this.  They also address the question of free-will in a manner similar to the way Kubrick did in "A Clockwork Orange", and just about as subtly, if not as skillfully.  If a man is compelled to act in a certain way, is he actually making a choice to act that way?  If you take away a person's "ability" to act, are they still a person?

The ethics of drone strikes is... kind of ignored.  Which is fine.  That might be even trickier than the notion of free-will.

RoboCop started out strong, but then... Somewhere along the line, it just... I don't know.  It's like the writer was like, "Well, that's some neat philosophy, isn't it?  Too bad we've got this whole plot to take care of.  So, let's just kind of take some shortcuts and shoot some stuff and end with the possibility for a sequel."  

I know I shouldn't look for too much depth in a movie like this, but, damnit, I hold sci-fi up to a higher standard.  I can appreciate a good ol' space opera, I think Pacific Rim was one of the best movies I saw last year, and the Resident Evil movies are good, stupid fun.  But, I know that the genre can be absolutely breathtaking.  It can get into philosophy and not be boring.  And to dangle some interesting concepts in front of me and not follow through?  Not cool, guys.

On the plus side, Michael Keaton is always entertaining.

The Lego Movie

The Lego Movie
Rated PG (I honestly don't know why. There isn't anything that happens that all of us haven't done or said.)
Directed by: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
Written by: Dan Hageman and Christopher Hageman (story), Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (story), Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (screenplay)
***1/2 out of ****

I suck at Lego. Just plain suck.

Sure, give me the instructions, and I can build the thing. But, coming up with something original? Well, I can come up with a pretty good box, which might have a door and a window. So, a house?

I guess that would make me both Emmet (Chris Pratt) and Lord Business (Will Ferrell), the hero and villain of "The Lego Movie". Which means that I'm complicated. Or not. The movie isn't subtle.

It is, however, gleefully stupid, gloriously silly, and clever without being smug about it.

Emmet is a Construction Worker in Blocksburg. The town is populated by Office Workers, Police, Firefighters, Doctors and a Surfer Dude. Just a typical, normal Lego town. One day, he accidentally discovered the Piece of Resistance, a legendary object that can, according to prophesy, stop the Kragle, a weapon capable of freezing the world.

Emmet meets WildStyle (Elizabeth Banks), a lady figure, Vitruvious (Morgan Freeman), a hippie wizard, Benny the '80s Astronaut (Charlie Day), Unikitty (my girlfriend Alison Brie), a kitty that is also a unicorn, Metal Beard (Nick Offerman), a cyborg pirate thing, and Batman (Will Arnett). Yes. This is an awesome team.

These people are up against Lord Business and his chief henchman Bad Cop/Good Cop (Liam Neeson), and the plan to freeze the multiverse.

The plot is there, moreso than in "Pacific Rim", but, really, the story isn't the point. The movie is about the magic of being a kid. The magic that you are only capable of before your prefrontal lobe develops fully. The magic that makes "Toy Story" and "Adventure Time" work. It's about worlds with rules and an internal logic, but at the same time, of course Luke Skywalker can show up in the G.I. Joe Mobile Command Center. Yeah, he can't drive, and he doesn't have a kung-fu grip, but, really, the Force against COBRA? The only thing that could beat that would be, what? Skeletor and Serpentor just teamed up? Well, that's fine. Optimus Prime just showed up and, no, dammit, you can't use a NERF dart gun! You're gonna break it! I HATE YOU! I'M TELLING YOUR MOM!

I can't say enough good things about this movie. The voice work is top-notch, the silliness is just delightful, and the cameos. Oh, man, the cameos. I'm sure I annoyed the entire theatre with my laughing. I smiled the entire time.

The movie draws on so many influences. Lego, obviously. But, also the Pikmin video game series, a huge range of pop culture (the end of "The Return of The Jedi", "Terminator 2", "Akira")... It's just delightful. I want to buy all the Lego sets.

Which brings me here. Only Fox News could be so completely comfortable with cognitive dissonance to say that a feature length commercial for a brand of toys could be "anti-business".