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After spending most of my Christmas vacation with my parents being sick as a dog and unable to do more than cough up phlegm and fitfully sleep the days away in my Dad's recliner, I drove back from Wisconsin on Saturday, January 5th (in plenty of time to preach on Epiphany Sunday), and since then I've finally been getting back to seeing movies in the theater, after what feels like (and apparently WAS) many, many months of NOT going to the movies.
I'll try to note below where there may be spoilers in my very, VERY BRIEF review comments.
First, I saw "Django Unchained" after church on Jan. 6th, and enjoyed it quite a lot (when I wasn't being overwhelmed with the violence, etc.). Great performances from all the principal actors, as you might expect. The use of part of the soundtrack from the Clint Eastwood classic "Two Mules for Sister Sara" during one scene was a bit of a surprise (since that's hardly the most typical Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western for Tarantino to musically reference), but hey, it worked in that particular sequence (a lot better than the same piece of music worked when it was inserted into the background of the 2011 "Sherlock Holmes" sequel, to accompany Holmes' ride on a donkey, I thought; THAT was both too 'on the nose' and too jarring with the musical tone of the rest of the movie, for my taste).
Then, after a faculty meeting on Jan. 11, I saw "Jack Reacher", followed by "Skyfall".
I found "Reacher" surprisingly entertaining and interesting, considering I'd never read (or even heard of, previously) any of the Jack Reacher novels. Tom Cruise may be a certifiable nut-job and fairly obnoxious in real life, but he seems to do really impressive work on-screen, especially when playing quirky, charismatic warrior-types. I wouldn't PAY to see it a second time in the theater, I don't think, but I highly recommend it as an entertaining 'whodunnit' and suspense movie to see once.
Then, "Skyfall" turned out to be just as good as I'd heard via reviews on NPR and read on Rotten Tomatoes. Considering that I don't even find Daniel Craig all that attractive to look at (at least, not when he's fully clothed, for some reason), I was kind of surprised to discover that this latest film really struck me as a highly superior Bond flick, possibly the best I've ever seen.
Somehow, this Bond movie felt more emotionally and intellectually authentic, even while bucking several of the standard expectations of the franchise, such as the high-tech super-gadgets that the old 'Q' section used to offer up. This time around, Bond and 'M' go seriously 'Old School' on the bad guys at one point, with a generous helping of MacGyver-style improvisation and ingenuity.
If I'm not the last person on the planet to see it, by now, I highly recommend seeing this film on the big screen.
Most recently, after church yesterday, I saw "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Les Miserables".
If there'd been another movie with even moderately decent reviews starting right at the time when I happened to reach the multiplex on my way home from church, then I might never have gotten around to seeing "Zero Dark Thirty" in the theater, I admit. And, as expected, the 'enhanced interrogation' scenes were highly unpleasant and disturbing to sit through, but not as bad as I'd feared, somehow. It was gripping and well-acted (even had John Barrowman speaking a whole two lines), but in the end the film left me feeling tired and wrung out emotionally, with no joy or satisfaction over the death of Bin Laden. Perhaps that weariness and sense of physical and emotional exhaustion was the goal, to identify with the ordeals of so many of the primary characters, not to mention the horrifying and incomprehensible suffering and loss of 9/11 and the other terrorist attacks referenced in the film.
I thought I had no emotional energy left, but "Les Miserables" (which I'd never seen on the stage, nor have I ever read the Victor Hugo novel -- in fact, what little I know of the plot and characters is derived from allusions to the work in other works, including one classic Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, where Captain Sisko is rather unfairly compared to Javert by an obnoxiously self-righteous Maquis agent) DID have me crying genuine tears pretty consistently towards the end, and Hugh Jackman (whom I've loved since the first "X-Men" film, but who's often been poorly served by the non-'X-Men' films he's been in) definitely didn't disappoint (though I was almost disturbed at how hot I still found him when he's showing an expanse of bare chest midway through the film, while supposedly being an aged father talking to the adult Cosette in their cozy Paris home -- far hotter than young Marius, at that point, to my 'aged' eyes!).
One side note, from someone who was seeing this story (or the musical adaptation of it, at least) for the very first time, I know one's not supposed to like Inspector Javert, and indeed I did not care for him at all -- though I could probably come up with a whole essay on the defense mechanism of his rigid and totally unforgiving world-view, based on what he revealed of his early childhood, IF I wanted to think about him that much, which I don't. However, I will say that I was genuinely surprised in the end by Javert's inability or unwillingness to live in the 'void' of meaning he saw all around him after being finally confronted with the reality of God's grace in the life and works of Jean Valjean. For me, that ALMOST made his character interesting, though still not remotely sympathetic.
Since I was far too sick to go out and see any movies while I was with my family in Wisconsin over Christmas and New Year, my sister did her best to at least keep me entertained with DVDs.
Once I was feeling a bit better, my sister made me watch "Cabin in the Woods", first, arguing that it was slightly strange for me to have seen "The Avengers" over ten times in the theater last summer, while never seeing the OTHER widely released Joss Whedon film from 2012. While I normally go way out of my way to avoid watching horror films about young adults being tortured and murdered, "Cabin" was better than I'd expected, though still not my cup of tea. I could appreciate the interesting and subversive concept and much of the execution, but I had more genuine FUN watching Bruce Willis and other 'old fogy' super secret agents in "Red" and Ben Stiller and company in "Tropic Thunder" (the other two new-to-me movies that sister got for me to watch on DVD while I was stuck in my parents' apartment using up their supply of cough medicine).
On my last night in Wisconsin I went to stay at my sister's house, since she hadn't seen much of me and her place was 30 minutes closer to Nashville than my folks' apartment in Waukesha, which gave us the chance to watch the DVD of "Prometheus" together, and we were both ultimately underwhelmed by it. On the plus side, the visuals WERE impressive, and what's not to love about Michael Fassbender's work as an actor, even when he's playing an android with serious family issues and a huge man-crush on Peter O'Toole's portrayal "Lawrence of Arabia"? But on the negative side of the ledger, what a waste of Guy Pearce, for example, buried beneath all that dying-old-guy make-up, when they might have been better off using an actual old guy actor! I think I'd rather re-watch the first "Alien vs. Predator" movie than this far more ambitious film, when all's said and done.
I'll try to note below where there may be spoilers in my very, VERY BRIEF review comments.
First, I saw "Django Unchained" after church on Jan. 6th, and enjoyed it quite a lot (when I wasn't being overwhelmed with the violence, etc.). Great performances from all the principal actors, as you might expect. The use of part of the soundtrack from the Clint Eastwood classic "Two Mules for Sister Sara" during one scene was a bit of a surprise (since that's hardly the most typical Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western for Tarantino to musically reference), but hey, it worked in that particular sequence (a lot better than the same piece of music worked when it was inserted into the background of the 2011 "Sherlock Holmes" sequel, to accompany Holmes' ride on a donkey, I thought; THAT was both too 'on the nose' and too jarring with the musical tone of the rest of the movie, for my taste).
Then, after a faculty meeting on Jan. 11, I saw "Jack Reacher", followed by "Skyfall".
I found "Reacher" surprisingly entertaining and interesting, considering I'd never read (or even heard of, previously) any of the Jack Reacher novels. Tom Cruise may be a certifiable nut-job and fairly obnoxious in real life, but he seems to do really impressive work on-screen, especially when playing quirky, charismatic warrior-types. I wouldn't PAY to see it a second time in the theater, I don't think, but I highly recommend it as an entertaining 'whodunnit' and suspense movie to see once.
Then, "Skyfall" turned out to be just as good as I'd heard via reviews on NPR and read on Rotten Tomatoes. Considering that I don't even find Daniel Craig all that attractive to look at (at least, not when he's fully clothed, for some reason), I was kind of surprised to discover that this latest film really struck me as a highly superior Bond flick, possibly the best I've ever seen.
Somehow, this Bond movie felt more emotionally and intellectually authentic, even while bucking several of the standard expectations of the franchise, such as the high-tech super-gadgets that the old 'Q' section used to offer up. This time around, Bond and 'M' go seriously 'Old School' on the bad guys at one point, with a generous helping of MacGyver-style improvisation and ingenuity.
If I'm not the last person on the planet to see it, by now, I highly recommend seeing this film on the big screen.
Most recently, after church yesterday, I saw "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Les Miserables".
If there'd been another movie with even moderately decent reviews starting right at the time when I happened to reach the multiplex on my way home from church, then I might never have gotten around to seeing "Zero Dark Thirty" in the theater, I admit. And, as expected, the 'enhanced interrogation' scenes were highly unpleasant and disturbing to sit through, but not as bad as I'd feared, somehow. It was gripping and well-acted (even had John Barrowman speaking a whole two lines), but in the end the film left me feeling tired and wrung out emotionally, with no joy or satisfaction over the death of Bin Laden. Perhaps that weariness and sense of physical and emotional exhaustion was the goal, to identify with the ordeals of so many of the primary characters, not to mention the horrifying and incomprehensible suffering and loss of 9/11 and the other terrorist attacks referenced in the film.
I thought I had no emotional energy left, but "Les Miserables" (which I'd never seen on the stage, nor have I ever read the Victor Hugo novel -- in fact, what little I know of the plot and characters is derived from allusions to the work in other works, including one classic Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, where Captain Sisko is rather unfairly compared to Javert by an obnoxiously self-righteous Maquis agent) DID have me crying genuine tears pretty consistently towards the end, and Hugh Jackman (whom I've loved since the first "X-Men" film, but who's often been poorly served by the non-'X-Men' films he's been in) definitely didn't disappoint (though I was almost disturbed at how hot I still found him when he's showing an expanse of bare chest midway through the film, while supposedly being an aged father talking to the adult Cosette in their cozy Paris home -- far hotter than young Marius, at that point, to my 'aged' eyes!).
One side note, from someone who was seeing this story (or the musical adaptation of it, at least) for the very first time, I know one's not supposed to like Inspector Javert, and indeed I did not care for him at all -- though I could probably come up with a whole essay on the defense mechanism of his rigid and totally unforgiving world-view, based on what he revealed of his early childhood, IF I wanted to think about him that much, which I don't. However, I will say that I was genuinely surprised in the end by Javert's inability or unwillingness to live in the 'void' of meaning he saw all around him after being finally confronted with the reality of God's grace in the life and works of Jean Valjean. For me, that ALMOST made his character interesting, though still not remotely sympathetic.
Since I was far too sick to go out and see any movies while I was with my family in Wisconsin over Christmas and New Year, my sister did her best to at least keep me entertained with DVDs.
Once I was feeling a bit better, my sister made me watch "Cabin in the Woods", first, arguing that it was slightly strange for me to have seen "The Avengers" over ten times in the theater last summer, while never seeing the OTHER widely released Joss Whedon film from 2012. While I normally go way out of my way to avoid watching horror films about young adults being tortured and murdered, "Cabin" was better than I'd expected, though still not my cup of tea. I could appreciate the interesting and subversive concept and much of the execution, but I had more genuine FUN watching Bruce Willis and other 'old fogy' super secret agents in "Red" and Ben Stiller and company in "Tropic Thunder" (the other two new-to-me movies that sister got for me to watch on DVD while I was stuck in my parents' apartment using up their supply of cough medicine).
On my last night in Wisconsin I went to stay at my sister's house, since she hadn't seen much of me and her place was 30 minutes closer to Nashville than my folks' apartment in Waukesha, which gave us the chance to watch the DVD of "Prometheus" together, and we were both ultimately underwhelmed by it. On the plus side, the visuals WERE impressive, and what's not to love about Michael Fassbender's work as an actor, even when he's playing an android with serious family issues and a huge man-crush on Peter O'Toole's portrayal "Lawrence of Arabia"? But on the negative side of the ledger, what a waste of Guy Pearce, for example, buried beneath all that dying-old-guy make-up, when they might have been better off using an actual old guy actor! I think I'd rather re-watch the first "Alien vs. Predator" movie than this far more ambitious film, when all's said and done.
(no subject)
I looked at my girlfriend and said "You made me sit through three hours of Christian propaganda?" She was a bit wounded, having never thought of it that way.
Javert is Lawful Neutral. To him, the law is the be all and end all. Mercy and grace are out of the question because those violate the Law.
Right there with you on Jackman, though, because young Marius will always be Jack from Pillars of the Earth
(no subject)
What bothered me was that Javert seemed to think of himself as Christian in some sense, and yet his 'theology' was more like pathology, completely ignoring the entire Old Testament and New Testament record of rogues redeemed and sinners forgiven, in favor of some entirely non-biblical fable he'd made up or partially derived from the works of John Milton and others, about the 'Fall' (definitely capitalized in his mind, from what I dimly recall of the lyrics he was singing to the night sky) of an angel named 'Lucifer' (the Latin Vulgate's translation of 'Morning Star', a nickname for a particular human ruler of Babylon in one particular Old Testament passage, as I recall) as punishment for one solitary mistake.
His penchant for daintily walking along the edge of rooftops and bridges showed that he had taken the metaphor of a 'Fall' from the path of righteousness and concretized it and confused it with the 'Law' of Gravity: just as you can't 'un-fall' off a high rooftop, should you accidentally or purposefully step over the edge, so also (he seemed to think) you can never 'un-fall' from any mistake or misdeed. His understanding of 'the Law' is a fantasy, to a great extent, which seems to be based on his need to see himself as qualitatively and irrevocably different from 'scum' like his parents and Jean Valjean. His insistence that 'mine is the way of the Law' felt to me like a big old excuse to project his hatred and hurts from childhood onto every poor soul whose poverty and desperation or insistence on defending the poor reminded him in any way of his humble origins.
Meanwhile, he seems to be intent on ignoring the fact that only a previous episode of lawless upheaval and revolution, intent on CHANGING the law of the land, could've been responsible for a child of the gutter like himself ever getting the chance to rise to the rank of honorable Inspector.
He reminds me of people who today insist that the government never helped them when they were poor and living on Food Stamps (!), and so why should their tax money go to help any Law-breaking, feckless freeloaders who want access to things like food and health care today? That's not a reasoned argument or moral philosophy so much as it is an obvious pathology and inability to deal with reality.
Or at least, that's how it struck me, on first exposure! It's not like it touched any of MY psychological sore points or pushed any of MY theological and ideological buttons, of course! ;)
(no subject)
And yeah, Javert was Christian, very much the sort of Christian I am familiar with, the ones where you must guard every thought, every action, every word. The kind where God forgives, but only if we are really repentant, and most people aren't. The kind where God forgives but church ladies don't and will shun you 20 years later for something your parents did.
It was the most Christian movie I've ever seen, and in all the right ways. It wasn't the "Scare You Into Heaven" tripe of A Thief in the Night or Left Behind. It was "Here is grace. Here is mercy. Here is love. Here is how it transforms a man." without being preachy.
Me, I'm a recovering fundamentalist gone pagan.
I was writing slash in my head, a Gladiator crossover, where the good inspector goes home to a pretty, scarred, Scottish houseman, who has been with him so long they've both gone gray.
(no subject)
However, now that you've raised the possibility of re-writing "Les Miz" and/or "Gladiator" to allow the pretty boys to get together in a much less poisonous atmosphere, I must say I'm intrigued.
Do, please, let me know if you come across any "kid and curtain" fics that have Javert embracing the path of grace (and the manly strength and beauty of Valjean) early in the film and helping to co-parent Cosette, for instance.
And if you ever do get around to writing a Jackman-ish character into a happier ending for Crowe's Gladiator,and making it available for others to enjoy, I'd love to read it.
After all, 'grace' and 'redemption' come in many different guises, and sexy old guys keeping house together has surely got to be one of them, right?
(no subject)
I'm a Maximus/Cicero shipper, and I just kind of imported him to make life a little easier for Javert.
Because everyone needs someone this pretty
I don't write fanfic any more. The professional work takes all my words. I've done a novel and a short story this month and have a couple shorts to do next month. And I'm still editing 2 novels as it is.
(no subject)
Also, I've been thinking for several years that I need to write a Firefly fanfic (or essay?) with The Operative as Javert and Mal as Jean Valjean. Not quite sure how to make the comparison without being heavy handed though...
(no subject)
And it is possible that my view of the Javert character was partially clouded and colored by the fact that I'm not generally a fan of Russell Crowe, and by the fact that Javert (as portrayed in the movie) was pushing so many of my psychological and theological 'hot buttons'. I'm sure you'll enjoy the film, though, if you're a fan of the musical.