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Review “Mad Max: Fury Road”

17 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Movies, Writing

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Mad Max: Fury Road is a fantastic movie. I will state right up front that I love action movies. I love action adventure, sci-fi action, fantasy action, action thrillers, action comedies, you name it, I like it. Now, not all action movies are good movies and I will not see a movie just because it is an action movie. Unless I’m home battling a cold. Then I can lay on the couch all day long watching horrible Sy-Fy channel (don’t you just hate their new spelling?) original movies. In a cold medicine induced haze even the true terribleness of those movies are fun. Like the original Mad Max, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdrome, Mad Max: Fury Road was directed by George Miller who also shares writing credit on all four films. The film stars Tom Hardy as the title character and Charlize Theron.

Let’s talk about Charlize Theron’s character Imperator Furiosa for a moment. Because she is awesome and because well-known “men’s rights” blogger Aaron Clarey has issued a call to all “real men” to boycott the movie for its “feminist agenda” and all manner of other horrible, no-good, terrible, liberal whatevers. George Miller is on record as stating that the movie did not start out with a feminist agenda, but that the mechanics of the story went in that direction. I don’t care whether George Miller is feminist, or meant to make a feminist movie. What I do care about is that there are a LOT of REAL women of all ages in this movie who are bad ass in any number of ways. And it shows women’s true strength as well as the one thing about them that makes them most vulnerable and is exploited to this day in all manner of ways; their reproductive abilities. Charlize Theron’s character is strong, empathetic, discerning, caring, formidable, capable, and fearless when needed, but understanding completely the odds against her and it is all of those qualities, even the seeming “feminine” or “soft” of them that make her so bad ass. The other women’s parts aren’t as large and they don’t have a lot of time to flesh out their characters, but they are all well written and well acted and important to the movie. And this profusion of women characters who are there for more than just eye candy, make this movie so much better than the usual action flick. Don’t get me wrong. I like eye candy as much as the next person. As a heterosexual woman I enjoy seeing gorgeous, fit men on the big screen as much as the next woman. But, I get to see those guys being more than just fit and gorgeous and it is so refreshing to see the same from women characters who are more than just the “token” strong woman who’s also the romantic interest of the male character.

As much as I appreciate Charlize Theron’s character and work in this movie, and she is the co-star, the story is still Mad Max’s. Max has the biggest character arc in this story, and changes the most due to the circumstances. There is one other male character with a similar arc and change that is also quite well done, that I won’t discuss to avoid spoilers. Tom Hardy’s Max is truly mad. More so, I think, than any of the previous incarnations of Max. He’s the kind of crazy that would get a person institutionalized in a pre-apocalyptic world. And the genius I think of Miller’s story is that Max is not the driver of this story. He’s sucked into other’s stories right from the beginning and is forced along for the ride very much against his will. This is something I think that men’s right proponents don’t seem to get. Their life is not just their story. Every one around them has their own life and story and sometimes they overlap in good ways and bad, but you will never make it through this life without allies, no matter their gender. Making entire other groups of people the enemy will never work out for you in the long run. And trust me, in a post-apocalyptic scenario you are going to want some bad ass women on your side. That is the reason a strong male character like Max survives. His strength is not just in his maleness, but his ability to see others as friend or foe based on their actions, not their gender or sexual orientation or skin color or any other thing that some people use as excuses to see themselves as superior.

George Miller clearly had a bigger budget than especially the first two Mad Max movies. The cinematography is appropriately post-apocalyptic. There is very little color other than the beiges and browns and grays of a desert world with very little water. The music is it’s own character in this movie. Literally. And I’ll leave it at that, other than to say it’s one of my favorites. The costumes and make-up are all great as well, showcasing the crazy, parched world where the haves and the have nots are easily delineated. Which brings me to the other aspect of this movie that I loved. I have no idea of George Miller’s politics or even if he meant to make a statement about inequality with this movie. But this movie shows clearly the atrocity of a few people having almost all of the resources, leaving the masses scrabbling for scraps and most importantly, the inherent instability of that kind of system. And to my point above, the masses, at the end of the day, care less about the gender, skin color etc. of their leaders, than their ability to make their lives better and will embrace change gladly.

Now if you could care less about the political and social nuances of a good action flick and are just there for the the stunts, explosions and naked women, this movie will not disappoint. The stunts are jaw-dropping and apparently none of the vehicle stunts were done with CGI, they were all real-world. This movie was so intense that it literally wore me out. I was so tense throughout the movie that a couple of times I realized I was hurting my sides I was squeezing my arms together so hard. I saw it in 3-D and while I hate the bits that come flying out at you really fast making you jump, this movie wasn’t terribly egregious in their use. And there was one bit near the end that was totally inspired. There was quite a bit of applause at the end of this movie, which doesn’t happen very often in a movie theater. I highly recommend this movie. It is quite a ride and will give you something to think about along the way.

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Review: “American Sniper”

03 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in Movies

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I hesitate to call this a movie review, because this was a piece of propaganda, pure and simple. American Sniper was directed by Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper plays the title role. Partial writing credit is given to Chris Kyle as some of the movie was based on the book written by him and Scott McEwen. In the book Chris Kyle states that shooting Iraqi’s was “fun” and that he “loved” doing it. He also stated, “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.” He called Iraqi’s “savages” and boasted of looting the apartments of Iraqi families in Fallujah. He also stated in his book, “People ask me all the time, ‘How many people have you killed?’ My standard response is, Does the number make me any more or less of a man? The number is not important to me. I only wish I had killed more.” His violent bent was not limited to Iraq however. He was also known to boast about going to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and shooting (sniping) 30 looters. A claim that is dubious at best. He started a security company before his death and the logo is a picture of a skull (that looks suspiciously like the skull from The Punisher) with a sniper site in one eye and the words, “Despite what your momma told you…Violence does solve problems.” His own words portray him as someone who had no issues with violence and that he enjoyed what he did and wished he could have killed more. The movie however portrays him as a man tortured and anguished by what he had to do in order to protect American freedom, while his selfless sacrifices caused suffering in his private life. The movie Kyle was presented very differently than the Kyle presented in his own words. Of course watching a man bragging about his kills and how much he enjoyed it wouldn’t fit the American propaganda that Muslims are evil and deserve what they get, while selfless heroes protect us from that evil.

Chris Kyle was known in military circles as “The Legend” and he is called that many times in the movie. One scene in the movie shows Kyle and his team invited into an Iraqi home, sitting at their table, eating their food, laughing and talking when the Iraqi man leans over to pick up something his son dropped and Kyle notices (no one else does) that his elbow is red. “The Legend” realizes this means he is an enemy combatant, so he leaves the table, searches the apartment and finds a stash of weapons. This gives the team permission to beat the shit out of the Iraqi, force him to lead them to an enemy leader while holding his family hostage and then kill him with the others. All of this makes Kyle a hero. Yet as I was watching that, all I could think was that a great many of the people who view Kyle as a hero for killing those evil “others” in order to protect our “freedoms” (which, by the way have been seriously eroded since 9/11, all in the name of “security”) probably have at least one gun and many have stashes of their own. Now, that would be considered one of our “freedoms” but I wonder if in the same situation, an occupying force coming in and overrunning their city, say the Chinese or the Russians, would those same people not do the same as the Iraqi’s? Use what they had to protect their families and property? Of course they would. But I guess they would be in the “right” to do so while those filthy, evil “others” are in the wrong. Sigh. See, that’s how propaganda works. Because in reality those Iraqi’s have just as much right to fight for their “country” and their “freedoms” and their way of life as we do ours. And until people wake up and realize that the uber-wealthy just use war as a way to maintain their uber-wealth and they use propaganda to make war seem “right” and “just” it will never stop. I was telling someone who asked me if I liked the movie that I felt it was just propaganda, glorifying war and one man who was very good at killing and their response was, “There’s been war since biblical times. There will always be war.” That my friends is the definition of propaganda working. You’ve got religion and war in one statement. Amen and pass me a gun.

Chris Kyle did four tours of duty. This also makes him a hero according to this movie. He left his wife to raise his children while he went back over and over. He did not have to go back that many times, it was his choice. It was his choice to go kill more people rather than raise his children and be husband to his wife. And that makes him a hero. Because he was doing it in order to “save” the other brave men there protecting our “freedom.” 6,802 American service people have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as of April, 2014. That is a sad figure, and I mourn for their lost lives, given so that America could try and gain control of vast oil fields. That said,  At the very least, 174,000 civilians have been determined to have died violent deaths as a result of the war as of April 2014. The actual number of deaths, direct and indirect, as a result of the wars are many times higher than this figure. It seems like someone should have been protecting the civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I guess if you see them as “savages” it can’t bother you that so, so many of them die while you protect a few soldiers with a sniper rifle. I however, also mourn for their lost lives and despair when a movie such as this glorifies one man’s death count with a rifle and never, not once even suggests that any Iraq or Afghanistan civilian died needlessly.

I did not know Chris Kyle. I doubt seriously that he was evil. He was certainly raised in the hunting and gun culture that is so ubiquitous in this country. He certainly bought into the propaganda about American exceptionalism and the military culture that has also become so prominent. But his own words and actions paint him as someone comfortable with a level of violence that is disconcerting at best, as well as disturbing levels of racism. American Sniper would have been a good movie if it had been truthful about all sides of Chris Kyle and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead it perpetuates the myth of American exceptionalism and “might = right”. Chris Kyle was shot and killed by a former service member who according to his mother was struggling with PTSD and had asked Kyle to talk to him. Kyle had taken him to a shooting range to talk to him and let him work off some steam. The irony that Chris Kyle was killed by a different type of casualty of war, while he was trying to help a man struggling so much with what he had seen and done that his only recourse seemed to be to kill “The Legend” and another marine Chad Littlefield (whom the movie never mentioned) is so blinding that I don’t think very many people see it.

Movie Review: “Virunga”

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Conservation, Love, Movies, Nature, Reviews

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Virunga is a documentary written and directed by Orlando von Einsiedel about the Virunga National Park in Congo and the struggles of its Rangers to maintain and protect the wildlife there. Virunga has the only remaining habitat for Mountain Gorillas  in the world, and has an orphanage for baby gorillas rescued from poachers who have killed their parents in order to sell the babies. But poachers are only one of the serious problems these dedicated rangers have to face. SOCO, a British oil company is drilling on park land in violation of Congolese law and is actively working to undermine the park. Civil war has broken out causing a terribly unstable environment and it is believed that SOCO is behind the rebel M23 group. This documentary follows a Belgian conservationist who is the warden of Virunga National Park who received death threats and survived an assassination attempt. It also follows a park ranger who was a former child soldier, and a brave young female journalist investigating SOCO who gets SOCO employees on hidden camera to admit to bribery of officials to undermine the park. They also regurgitate those old racist chestnuts that the people of Congo are not “mature” enough to govern themselves, that they are really like children and they are doing them a favor by trying to take over. This favor includes bloody battles that displace tens of thousands, maiming and injuring hundreds of civilians, most of them children. This is not an easy movie to watch. The young gorillas in the orphanage, clinging to their caretakers in fear as shelling goes on nearby, tiny children in makeshift hospitals recovering from traumatic amputations, and the funerals of park rangers killed trying to protect the park (over 130 have died to date) are heartbreaking to watch. I was in tears more than once. But also watching the press conferences by old, white, rich men from SOCO proclaiming they love the environment and follow the law to the letter and would never harm the animals or people made me nauseous. I truly wonder at the ability of people like that to live with themselves. All that said, the obvious love between the orphaned gorillas and their caretakers, the relief of the rangers when they can finally get to the mountain gorilla habitat after the fighting and find that the gorillas are ok, and the resilience of the people of Congo are wonderful to see. Documentaries like this are so important because only by bringing to light the practices of greedy multi-national corporations will enough people stand up to stop their destruction of our planet in order to maintain their greed. At the end of the documentary, there is a statement by SOCO that says in part that they follow the law, they would never harm the mountain gorillas, they had nothing to do with arming and paying the M23 rebels, the employees caught on tape were rogues and were terminated and their employees were not on site during fighting in any kind of “official” capacity. If you believe any of that, I have some swamp land on the moon I’d like to sell you. Virunga is available to watch on Netflix and I highly recommend it. You can also find out more information about the movie at virungamovie.com.

Movie Review: “Mockingjay Part 1”

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Movies, Reviews

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Mockingjay part 1 is clearly a set up for the final movie in the series. I have not read the books and so don’t really have an idea of why the final book was turned into two movies. I tend to be somewhat on the bandwagon that it was mainly a financial decision, the studios hoping to cash in with four movies rather than three. I base that mostly on the fact that as I stated above this movie was clearly a set up. Much of what happened could have been easily condensed. That said, Mockingjay was not a bad movie. It was surreal watching Philip Seymour Hoffman in his final role. He was filming Mockingjay at the time of his death and although he had finished filming everything for this movie, he still had scenes to film for the final one. It will be interesting to see how they handle that, but it may be seamless, especially for those like me who didn’t read the source material. This is not the movie to watch to see Philip Seymour Hoffman as the superb actor he was. Not that he was bad, he was convincing in his role as Plutarch Heavensbee, it just didn’t give him a lot to do. Jennifer Lawrence is, in my opinion an amazing actor. She brought me to tears a couple of times during this movie. You just absolutely believe everything Katniss Everdeen is feeling, especially her reluctance to be seen as some kind of savior. She only wants to protect those she loves and keeps finding herself in situations she would have never looked for or wanted because of her strength and loyalty. Jennifer Lawrence is very young and I imagine we’ll see many more great things from her in the future. She is the reason that these movies have done so well. If Katniss had not been cast well I doubt the first movie would have done well enough to even warrant the second. She sings a song partway through the movie that just breaks your heart. Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy and Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket continue to be two of my favorite characters in the series. They are both fine actors who make what could be cartoonish characters into believable and real people. In my opinion, Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark and Liam Hemsworth as Gale Hawthorne are two of the weakest links. They aren’t terrible, I just don’t ever really feel that much for either of them. To be fair, neither of them were given much to do this go round. Julianne Moore played Alma Coin, President of District 13. She was fine, playing a good leader, but we never really get a chance to get to know what kind of person she is outside her leadership role. And of course Donald Sutherland returns as the smug, evil President Snow. He’s really good at the coldhearted gamesmanship of his character. After three movies of his playing games with peoples lives, I’m ready to see his comeuppance and I hope it’s a good one. The cinematography for this film isn’t as interesting as it has been in the previous films, but that is more story driven and probably part of the reason it wasn’t as compelling. There is very little time spent in the capital. There is a bit of time spent in a bombed out District 12 and in a logging area of District 8, but most of the movie is underground in District 13 and concrete walls and stairwells just aren’t that visually compelling. The scene where Katniss sings her song however, is on a river and is one of my favorites in the movie. I’m looking forward to seeing the conclusion of the story for this group of characters, but I wish it had come without so much filler. I would have liked to have been more excited at the end of this movie, as I was at the end of the second movie. Hopefully the final movie will be worth the wait.

Movie Review: “Interstellar”

10 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Love, Movies, Reviews

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This is probably going to be the shortest review in the history of reviews. Mainly because I don’t want to give anything away and I’m not sure I can discuss the science with any degree of accuracy. I am just smart enough to grasp the concepts without having any clue as to how or why they work. So trying to explain it is probably pointless. I will say that within my understanding or grasp of the science involving space exploration, wormholes, black holes, and how time behaves in the presence of the immense forces of gravity around and within a black hole, the movie seemed to get it mostly right. Interstellar was directed by Christopher Nolan and stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn, Mackenzie Foy and Casey Affleck. The acting was uniformly good. I don’t feel there was a weak link at all in the acting. The story is quite complicated so I won’t even try to talk about it because, as I said, I don’t believe I can without giving things away. Despite its complicated story, I had no trouble following or understanding what was happening. Visually Interstellar is beautiful. The depictions of a drought and famine stricken earth, space, and distant planets are fantastic, especially in their differences. I saw Interstellar in IMAX and it is well worth the higher ticket price. The seats were shaking so much during the spacecraft liftoff, that it felt almost as if the theater was leaving orbit too. This movie is dialogue heavy and moves slowly in places. It clocks in at 2 hours and 48 minutes long as well, and that along with it’s slow build-up could be disastrous, but at the end of the movie I was surprised it had been nearly three hours. I was also wrung out because  Interstellar is also tense, suspenseful and emotional. There are surprises in the movie that you don’t see coming. Despite all of the science depicted in this movie, Interstellar is first and foremost a movie about Love and how it transcends time and space. And for me that is reason enough to highly recommend it to everyone. Have you seen Interstellar? If so, let me know what you thought in the comments!