Spectre

I've decided that maybe I don't want Daniel Craig to make any more James Bond movies.

If you know me, you know this is an almost heretical statement. I am not exaggerating when I say that I love Daniel Craig as James Bond. In fact, he is the only Bond I've ever taken seriously, the only Bond for whom I always see the movie in the theater (and often on opening weekend). The only other Bond I found interesting was Timothy Dalton, because I felt his face showed more character and emotion than our other smooth-faced heroes. To be fair, Daniel Craig has had the benefit of excellent writing, whereas most Bonds got little more than bad puns and over-the-top villains. But still, I really do feel that Daniel Craig was made for this part.

But back to the point: the reason I would be OK with Daniel Craig calling it quits is because Spectre very nicely completes a four-film arc encompassing both plot and emotional development. Questions are answered. Old friends and foes are revisited, even the ones who are dead.

MAJOR SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT FORWARD

As a brief summary, soon after the movie opens we learn that Bond had received a video message from M (the Judi Dench one) upon her death, directing him to kill a certain man and be sure to attend his funeral. At said funeral, Bond befriends the widow (Monica Bellucci, from the second and third Matrix movies), whose life is in danger because she knows too much about her dead husband's secret organization. Bond gets her to safety and infiltrates Spectre, a group that indulges in human trafficking and also engineers terrorist attacks to get governments to willingly give up the keys to their intelligence offices. Bond is shocked when the group's leader, Blofeld, turns out to be someone he knew long ago and believed dead.

Shortly thereafter, Bond travels to a remote snow-bound chalet where he finds a dying Mr. White, whom we saw in both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace -- the very man behind the blackmail that got Vesper killed. White is disinclined to give Bond information about Blofeld, until Bond agrees to find and protect White's daughter, Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux). Who, as it turns out, is less than happy to be reintroduced to a way of life she thought she left behind.

In the course of navigating a number of captures and escapes, James and Madeleine sleep together, but it's different than Bond's usual encounters save one: Vesper. Madeleine isn't Vesper, but it's no accident that her and James's mutual attraction first becomes apparent during a formal dinner aboard a train, or that Madeleine asks the same kind of penetrating questions that Vesper once asked, about choices and what compels a man to kill for a living. However, before Bond goes off to try and save the world yet one more time, Madeleine says goodbye, saying that she can't go back to an existence filled with violence, but she also knows she can't change him. Without words and not even very much in the way of facial expression, Craig still manages to convey just how heavy a blow this is for James. But he is 007, and he still has a job to do.

I won't go into too many more details, except to point out one other parallel between James's relationships with Vesper and Madeleine. Both women serve as a direct reason that James decides not to kill a villain when he could. In Vesper's case, it comes at the end of Quantum of Solace (which is my opinion is simply the second half of Casino Royale). James finally gets to confront the man who pretended to be Vesper's boyfriend so that Mr. White's organization could control her, yet James leaves this man alive. He does so in part because the man has important information, but I think he also does it because he knows Vesper wouldn't want him to kill when he doesn't have to. The same thing happens in Spectre; James can kill Blofeld in the end, but realizes what he actually wants more is to walk away with Madeleine, who is now willing to be with him because she sees this change as it happens.

I love the circular nature of these four films.

Other thoughts, in no particular order:

• I adore the fact that we get to see more of Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), M (Ralph Fiennes), Q (Ben Whishaw), and Tanner (Rory Kinnear). Perhaps my memory of earlier Bond movies is sketchy, but it seems to me that previously, Q and Moneypenny existed to serve up humor and provide a vehicle for Bond's innuendo, respectively. But they have so much more to contribute in the new films! And I like both Judi Dench and Ralph Fiennes as their respective M's. I'm not 100% sure I understood this correctly, but it sounded to me like the Fiennes M not only has more field experience than most people know, he either was or still is a double-O. (Although I have to admit that it does seem odd to me that nobody would know this -- everyone knows Bond is one.) And how wonderful that Q finally got a little field action, albeit not intentionally.
  
  
• I enjoyed Andrew Scott as C in this film. In the U.S. at least, Scott is best known as the BBC Sherlock's Moriarty. For me, that character occasionally goes a little too far over-the-top, but here, we get the intelligent menace without crossing that line.
  
  
• While I liked Blofeld's connection with Bond's past, I actually thought it was going to be even closer than it turned out to be. Basically, Blofeld is the son of a man who took Bond under his wing when Bond was orphaned. Presumably unbeknownst to James, the slightly older Blofeld became consumed with jealousy because he thought James was taking his place. James had always believed that Blofeld died in the same avalanche that killed Blofeld's father, but it turns out the son murdered the father and faked his own death.
  
  So, where I thought this was going was that Blofeld was going to be James's biological brother, and that it just hadn't been mentioned that the older brother was killed along with James's parents. I probably wouldn't have had this misconception if I'd been able to get a closer look at the guardianship papers James received among his personal effects from Skyfall, but I couldn't read quickly enough, and I also struggled with spoken names in this film. (If I see a movie I really like, the first thing I do is buy the DVD and watch it with subtitles, which always clears up a bunch of things I missed the first time around.) Ah well, Blofeld as Bond's real brother probably would have been too much for me, but a part of me wonders.
  
  
• I'll be interested to see where this franchise goes next. I suspect it will be very difficult to top these past four films, especially when taken together as a whole, but I'm willing to keep an open mind.
  
  
• Calling it now: if the films are still being produced twenty years from now, I think Matthew Lewis, who played Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movies and who I think of as a young Clive Owens, could certainly play the part.
  

Hmm, I wonder how long until this comes out on DVD. I feel a marathon coming on.

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Snowpiercer

Nothing says "Beat the Houston summer heat" like a snowpocalypse movie! Snowpiercer came out in 2013, and is one I'd hoped but didn't manage to see in the theater before it disappeared. Fortunately, it's not a movie that really requires a big screen, especially since 99% of the film takes place in the interior of a single train.

The movie, starring Chris Evans, starts with a heavy-handed and illogical voiceover explaining that humanity's attempts to "cure" global warming resulted in an instant freeze that killed everyone. Yes, the voice actually says that nobody survived, and then immediately explains that the few who did survive (!) did so by getting aboard a high-tech train that circles the world once each year.

The action itself begins at the back of the train, where people live in squalor and eat protein bars that are delivered at regular intervals by machine-gun-armed guards. Curtis (Evans) is biding his time and planning a revolt, advised by the elderly Gilliam (John Hurt) and accompanied by his young friend Edgar (Jamie Bell). When a swanky representative from the front of the train arrives and takes two children away from tail-dwellers Tanya (Olivia Spencer) and Andrew (Ewen Bremner) under the guise of a "medical examination," they too risk life and limb by joining the uprising instead of staying behind in relative "safety."

(MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD) As I'm sure is already obvious, the set-up of this movie is absolutely ludicrous and also quite grim. Yet it somehow worked for me, in exactly the same way as the highly illogical Looper (2012) did. Like most people, I like rooting for the oppressed underdog, and I also enjoy post-disaster set-ups and reluctant heroes with checkered pasts. It was also fun to move through the train with the rebels, seeing the surroundings gradually improve until the decadent opulence of the front-most cars is revealed. There were tons of moments in this movie when I thought "oh, no!" because I could see exactly what nastiness was about to happen, but there were also moments when the visuals caught me off guard and delighted me. The movie shows no embarrassment about going over the top; for instance there's a meat locker car with hanging carcasses, but no evidence where the live animals are kept until it's time to slaughter them. Since the train cars are in one straight line, well, the rebels would have to have go through the livestock cars too, so where are they? The greenhouse car is almost believable, but I feel like the aquarium car would require Tardis-like technology to exist as shown.

Similarly, some of the acting is over-the-top, particularly Tilda Swinton as Mason, the spokesperson for the reclusive creator of the train, Wilford (Ed Harris). Mason likes to make speeches, wearing ridiculous eyeglasses and prominent false teeth, yet it completely works, and in particular provides a nice contrast to Chris Evans' appropriately understated performance. Oh, and along the way the rebels pick up a man, Namgoong Minsoo (Kang-ho Song), and his daughter, Yona (Ah-sung Ko) from the prison car, which keeps its prisoners in morgue-like drawers (bathrooms? food?). Curtis bribes this drug-addicted pair to open the "gates," or doors between cars, along the way, but there is more to them than meets the eye. Another absolutely surreal moment is when they arrive at the classroom car, where every child on the train is about the same age, and is taught about the glorious history of Wilford by a Stepford-wife teacher.

(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD) Predictably, the rebels are gradually winnowed down, ultimately leaving Curtis to face Wilford alone. There'd been a bit of foreshadowing, when Gilliam advised Curtis to cut Wilford's tongue out rather than let him talk, but of course Curtis does let him talk. Wilford explains that he and Gilliam have been in regular communication between the front and back of the train, and that the only way anyone continues to survive is because Wilford allows semi-regular revolts to winnow the population when needed. (So maybe it made sense that all the children are the same age, if they're born in cycles?) This isn't an especially surprising reveal at this point, but audiences also like circular plots, and it's a satisfying revelation.

We also learn that the two seized children have been brought up to the front not as sexual playthings for Wilford, but rather because they're small enough to perform critical functions that keep the train's engine running. Furthermore, Wilford makes an almost unconscious hand motion mimicking what the kidnapped children are now required to do over and over in the bowels of the engine. Mason, too, had earlier made this motion, which implies that both Wilford and Mason's roots -- and their distinct brands of "Crazy" -- originated because they too had been co-opted as children and had spent years in solitary confinement and mind-numbing labor.

At first I thought this was a combination of a Matrix/Dread Pirate Roberts scenario, meaning that 1) the people have been on the train much longer than the 18 years they believe have elapsed, and 2) this Wilford is not the original Wilford, who could not have invented the train if he worked as a child inside its already-functional engine. On the other hand, Curtis specifically remembers that he's been on the train 18 years and knows he has seen the outside world, although he says he chooses not to remember it. On the other other hand, this could easily be a memory planted by Gilliam, and what the train dwellers believe is one "year" could actually be much longer. I myself like the idea that this has all been going on much longer than 18 years, but I'm not sure the movie managed to convincingly "sell" that idea.

The movie ends when Namgoong Minsoo and his daughter manage to blow open the door of the train, which also causes an avalanche that knocks the train off the tracks. I fully expected to see Curtis emerge from the wreckage, and have the movie end on one of those scenes where a few survivors are shown straggling out, implying that they will band together and somehow survive, like when we see people emerging from Manhattan buildings near the end of The Day After Tomorrow (2004). But we only see Yona and Tonya's little boy Timmy (Marcanthonee Reis) appear, wearing convenient Inuit furs (but no mittens). And then we see a polar bear look at them curiously from a distance. I took this as a "it's a new world and there's hope of survival" sign, whereas my husband interpreted this as "Yona and Timmy become polar bear food."

So all that made me start wondering: could they survive? On the one hand, there are lots of fresh dead bodies to provide food for a while. On the other hand, if they're really the only two survivors, well, that's bad. And I'm not sure they still have any means of generating fire -- a big deal is made out of their last match being used to light the fuse to blow the door, so if they can't find a way to ignite things to burn, that's going to be a problem. It's also not clear how many of the derailed train cars are still accessible to them, because some of the cars toppled off at various points on the track and could be down in unreachable mountain crevasses.

In the end, though, as ridiculous as this movie was, I couldn't help but like it. It horrified me, it surprised me at times, and it made me think about it for quite a while after it was over. Again, just like Looper, and also a bit like Edge of Tomorrow (2014).

Plus, you know, Chris Evans, showing that he can play roles quite different from the rigidly upright Captain America. I also recommend his movie Push (2009), in which an adorably tween-aged Dakota Fanning co-stars.
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Imagine Me & You

I don't know how many folks have heard of Imagine Me & You; I certainly can't remember where I came across it, but I've only just watched it for the first time. What you know going in is pretty much represented in the movie poster: Piper Perabo and Lena Headey seem to be attracted to each other, but Piper is obviously getting married. So I was expecting a same-sex romantic comedy, which maybe it is, but it's also more serious than that.

The basic set-up is that Luce (Headey) is a florist in London delivering the flowers to a wedding, although she hasn't yet met the bridal couple because the bride's mother has made all those arrangements. Just as Rachel (Perabo) is walking down the aisle to marry the man who's been her boyfriend and best friend as long as she can remember, she and Luce see each other for the first time and are immediately drawn to each other. Rachel initially chalks it up to a simple connection with a kindred spirit, but before long she realizes it's more than that. Luce, who is openly gay, knows immediately what is happening but doesn't believe in mucking around with other people's relationships.

There's a lot that's both amusing and sweet in this movie, particularly Rachel's much younger sister, "H", who constantly asks questions about why people don't have dessert (or pudding) after breakfast, why the alphabet's in that particular order, and what happens when an irresistible force meets an unmovable object. But the movie is serious too. It would be a lot easier to root for Rachel and Luce if Heck, Rachel's husband, weren't the nicest guy on the planet (and pretty damn cute too). Rachel has no desire to hurt him, and certainly doesn't intend to leave him, but she also has the example of her parents' fairly loveless marriage right there in front of her.

Speaking of parents, I liked the relationship that Rachel has with her father, played by Anthony Head of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, and that Luce has with her mother, played by Sue Johnston. And even the standard shallow best man, Coop (Darren Boyd), is a pretty likeable shallow best man. The real highlights, though, are Boo Jackson as H (she hasn't been in any other film before or since), and the chemistry between Rachel and Luce.

On another note, I've found that one of the best ways to find little-known films that you're likely to like is to watch the previews on the DVDs of other little-known films. I'm pretty sure that's where my next movie review is coming from. Read more!

The House of Yes

I cannot for the life of me remember where I first heard about this movie, or even when it first entered my DVD collection. It came out in 1997, and while it's from Miramax, which isn't exactly a small studio, it definitely has the independent film vibe, in part because it stars Parker Posey, who's all about the indy films.

In this movie, Parker plays Jackie-O, a young woman with mental problems living at home with her mother (Geneviève Bujold) and her younger brother, Anthony (Freddie Prinze, Jr.). Her twin brother, Marty (Josh Hamilton) is coming home from New York City, but unbeknownst to Jackie-O, he's bringing a fiance, Lesly (Tori Spelling). Over the course of one hurricane-filled night, Lesly learns that Jackie-O is not the only person in the family with serious mental issues, and that Jackie-O and Marty have a very unusual relationship for siblings, based in part on their fascination with the JFK assassination. That's not to say they're studying it or trying to figure out if there was a conspiracy; no, they like to re-create the scene, which for some inexplicable reason turns them on.

I had mixed feelings watching this movie again, because I'm more aware now than I used to be that there are real people out there in the world for whom the assassination is still a very personal tragedy. I feel that way about those Darwin Award books too -- assuming the anecdotes are true, somebody actually died, and how must their survivors feel to see their deaths being turned into cocktail party entertainment? So on the one hand, it seems in poor taste to use the JFK assassination for comedy. On the other hand, this is very much a dark comedy, and part of the fascination is that it's hard to believe that these characters could be so screwed up, yet they make you believe it. And it's kind of the point that it's in bad taste to use the assassination for ... well, things other than comedy. This is one sick family.

The entire film is very well acted; even Tori Spelling, whose work I would not normally seek out, was well cast in the role of the sweet, naive, and not very bright Lesly. Geneviève Bujold is positively scary as the mother, Freddie Prinze Jr. somehow manages to be even more creepy than his incestuous older siblings, and of course we all know that Parker Posey can play crazy. I should also note that Rachael Leigh Cook does a nice job playing a younger version of Jackie-O in some flashback sequences. Josh Hamilton as Marty is the least distinct in a way, but that's also appropriate as he's the one family member who is actually trying to escape to Normal-town. Choosing a sweet but unremarkable fiance is part of that plan. Yet it seems he cannot resist Jackie-O once he's back under the same roof with her.

The film is on the short end at only 85 minutes, and it has a tiny cast. IMDB notes that the play was written by Wendy MacLeod and was adapted for the screen by Mark Waters. For such a "little" picture, it sure is memorable. I'll admit that I don't understand the relevance of the movie's title, but perhaps it refers to the fact that Jackie-O is a master manipulator and people, even her scary mother, only seem able to say "yes" to her. In any case, I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone who likes dark comedy. Read more!

The Ramen Girl

One of the nice things about inexpensive DVD technology is that you can find all these quirky little movies that nobody has ever heard of and watch them at your leisure. And once Amazon figures out that you like quirky little movies that nobody has ever heard of, it keeps showing you new ones. When I became aware of The Ramen Girl, buying it was a no-brainer for me because I've always liked Brittany Murphy, and because it's set in Japan, for which I have a soft spot. I've only been there once myself but my husband has traveled there extensively and has brought me back stacks of their beautiful children's picture books, and I've taken some beginning Japanese lessons. I hope to go back in the not-too-distant future.

The story begins when Abby is abandoned by her commitment-phobic boyfriend after she has followed him to Tokyo. Wandering around without purpose, she is attracted by a little ramen shop near the apartment in which her boyfriend has left her (a deleted scene indicates that the rent has been paid in advance for six months, which seems a little odd). Abby decides that she wants to be able to make people happy and that ramen is the way to do it, so she pesters the shop owner to teach her, even though she speaks no Japanese and he speaks no English. Over the course of the next year, Abby scrubs the little restaurant within an inch of its life (shades of Mr. Miyagi's "wax on, wax off") and finally learns to put her heart into her cooking.

There are no two ways about it: this movie is a mess. Yet I still quite liked it, which I think is due to my liking of Brittany and Japan, and perhaps also of movies that go for a slightly different setting than, say, the New York/Chicago/Los Angeles bright young professional scene. I think this movie also must have meant something special to Brittany herself, as she's the second named producer on it. What I enjoyed was that the character does grow, and that the shop owner's wife and the shop's regular customers are clearly rooting for Abby to succeed. I also thought that Toshiyuki Nishida, who played the shop owner, was very good.

What didn't work for me is a little more complicated. The first thing is that the movie couldn't decide if it wanted to be mystical or not. When Abby is eating in the restaurant for the first time, she "sees" the large lucky cat statue on a shelf beckon to her. When she eats there the next time, she and another customer, who is also clearly exhausted and depressed, find themselves giggling like schoolchildren when they eat the ramen; it's implied that the chef can magically make people feel better. Later, when Abby "puts her tears" into her broth, her customers all break down into tears themselves. It's a bit like the movie Chocolat, when Vianne puts magic aphrodisiacs and other things into her confections. In addition, when Abby bursts into the shop wanting to work there, the pots and pans start moving as though from the force of her will. The problem is that the movie should have either embraced this supernatural aspect or left it out; it's as though the writers just couldn't make up their mind what kind of movie it was supposed to be. (Remember Exit to Eden, which didn't know if it was a comedy or an erotic film, and therefore succeeded as neither?)

(Toshiyuki Nishida as Maezumi and Brittany Murphy as Abby)
Along those same lines, there was a rather ridiculous sub-plot that absolutely didn't belong in the movie. Early on, Abby meets a couple of American ex-pats, one of whom is a gorgeous red-head named Gretchan who sports a fake Southern accent and who works as a hostess, sometimes providing "favors" for her sugar daddy's friends in return for the apartment he keeps her in. She shows up once with a black eye, implying abuse, and shows up another time drunk and unhappy. But that's it. She has little purpose in the movie, because Abby is bright enough that she doesn't need to be shown how not to live -- we have no indication that Abby's headed down a path that hopeless. There are apparently several deleted scenes involving this character, and I suspect they would have taken out all of them except that they clumsily use Gretchan as the means to get Abby's new love interest, Toshi (played by Sohee Park), to her apartment. Deleting that scene probably would have made things confusing, but they couldn't leave it in without us knowing who Gretchan was, so we get some but not all of Gretchan's story. I would rather have had Abby meet Toshi in a different way.

And speaking of Toshi.... I liked him just fine, but there was a point early in the movie when I actually thought Abby might end up with the slightly chubby, slightly older regular customer at the ramen shop, who is clearly smitten with her. I was thrilled when I thought it was headed in that direction, because that really would have been something out of the ordinary, and there was lots of opportunity for his character development. But true to romantic comedy form, the gorgeous young Toshi, who I mentally nicknamed "Cheekbones," showed up in time to take the romantic lead. His part is actually quite small, which is good because it lets Abby save herself instead of being saved, but I still think I was secretly rooting for that chubby customer.

(SPOILERS FOLLOW) Pacing, particularly in terms of character development, was another issue for me. There's one of those I'm-so-happy-now-I'm-dancing-in-my-apartment montages quite early in the film, for no apparent reason. And Abby goes from doing nothing but scrubbing to having perfect ramen technique, even though we have not once seen her sensei show her how to do anything. Instead, we see him telling her in Japanese, which she still doesn't understand, that she needs to stop cooking with her head and start cooking with her heart -- but we haven't even seen her doing it with her head yet! The movie then tries to introduce an artificial "deadline" by having the Ramen Master plan to visit in two months' time. His blessing is apparently required before a ramen chef can name a successor, and a rival chef taunts Maezumi by bragging that the Master will test that chef's son at that time. When the rival then mocks Maezumi for training a blond American girl, Maezumi boasts that the Master will also test Abby, and that if she fails, he will stop making ramen.

Suddenly, then, whether or not Abby will succeed becomes dire and pressing, in an extremely contrived way. And here's where it gets a little confusing: Abby does fail (the Master says her broth is good but she needs more experience), but I can't tell whether Maezumi stops cooking or not. I think he does, because later Abby displays a photograph showing Maezumi and his wife in Paris with their estranged son, but for all I know that could just have been a vacation. And Maezumi tells Abby that she is his successor, but she doesn't stay in Tokyo and take over his restaurant; instead, we flash to a year later, in which she has her own little ramen shop in New York -- where Cheekbones finds her again after having learned from her to follow his dreams instead of working in a job he hates.

Since I'm nitpicking, two other things kind of bugged me. First, Abby learns almost no Japansese after a year of working in a restaurant where no English is spoken. I think this was done so that Abby and Maezumi could continue to have their misunderstandings and frustration with one another, but it speaks to a lack of dedication on her part -- if she really was that serious, she would have realized that learning the language was part of the process. Second, only a year to get back to the States and find the money to open a restaurant in New York City? I guess we're meant to believe that her ramen was so good that someone was willing to back her, but after watching a lot of Top Chef, I have the idea that opening a restaurant, no matter how small, takes a hell of a lot of money. Especially in New York City.

Once again, it seems that all I've done about this movie is gripe, but really, I did like it! I just think it could have been a much better movie if it weren't so confused in terms of focus and pacing. I've watched a few of the deleted scenes but not all of them; I suspect the largest problem for this movie was in deciding what and what not to keep. I'll definitely watch this again at some point. If you like Brittany Murphy or enjoy romantic comedies in unusual settings, you might enjoy The Ramen Girl.

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Jupiter Ascending

This movie was more fun than you can shake a stick at. It's gorgeous, it's sprawling, but most of all it's just fun. I'd been told not to expect too much from the plot, and I did think it was a little bit convoluted, but the actual explanation for why Jupiter (Mila Kunis) was considered so special was more creative and interesting than I expected. Oh, and before I forget to mention it: this is definitely worth seeing on the big screen (and we also enjoyed seeing it in 3-D).

The premise of this movie is that Jupiter Jones, a Russian immigrant whose father was killed during her mother's pregnancy, is chafing against her unglamorous life, which consists of cleaning rich people's houses along with her extended family. She's shocked to learn that several different extraterrestrial factions are pursuing her because she is somehow royalty, and she has to learn quickly how to maneuver among some very experienced manipulators. Then there's action and ships flying around and blowing up and love brewing, and that's about it. It was plenty.

(Spoilers below)


Some of the elements I enjoyed in particular:

- The fact that the main character is named Jupiter Jones, because that's the name of the main character in the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series books I read as a kid.

- The bees. When Caine (Channing Tatum) goes to find Stinger, I assumed the hundreds of beehives were there because Stinger was trying to help with our environmental bee crisis, but instead the bees actually served a purpose within the plot.

- The costumes, oh my lord, the costumes! Jupiter's gowns are slightly less theatrical (aside from that wedding headpiece) but at least as beautiful as Queen Amidala's. I was also taken with the idea of a wedding where the guests wear white and the bride and groom wear white and blood red. (I don't think that could happen in the U.S. very easily since men rarely own white clothes, but I could see a wedding where the female guests wear white and the men wear black, and the bride and groom wear red.)

- Sean Bean as Stinger Apini. Because... Sean Bean.

- The fact that when Jupiter is attracted to Caine, she pursues it instead of just waiting for him -- yet she doesn't try and use her position to force him if he's not into her.

- The aliens because they actually looked alien -- especially the reptilian creatures with wings.

- Nikki Amuka-Bird as the kick-ass Captain Diomika Tsing. We need more female characters like this in science fiction, where it's taken for granted that they belong in positions of power too.

- The fact that there's a refinery inside the planet Jupiter's atomsphere unbeknownst to us, and that the extraterrestrials open a shielded vortex through the Great Red Spot to get there.

- James D'Arcy, also known as Jarvis from Marvel's Agent Carter, as Jupiter's father. I love him as Jarvis, but that character is so upright and serious that the actor seems older than he is; here, we get to see his gorgeous smile and some energy, and it makes him young and appealing.

- Did I mention Sean Bean? He's pretty much Han Solo in this film -- I almost expected him to go swooping into the Great Red Spot after Caine at the last moment. But that would have been too obviously Han Solo, so right call, I think.

- The fact that for no reason except that it's fun, the galactic bureaucracy that is the Title Claims Office operates in funky steampunk mode rather than using the shiny high-tech that is apparent everywhere else.

Things I Might Have Changed:

- I feel pretty strongly that Mila Kunis should have gotten top billing over Channing Tatum.

- I expected more explanation for Caine's checkered history -- I assumed the entitled he attacked was one of the Abrasax family, but I don't think that was confirmed.

- I thought that Balem's part was overacted a bit, but I attribute that to direction rather than to the actor. I liked the wispy voice, but the sudden shouting seemed a little too Gary-Oldman-over-the-top to me. That said, Eddie Redmayne did a great job in the part.

- I actually did like the music (Michael Giacchino) quite a bit, but I felt like it overwhelmed the movie at times, as though it was trying too hard. I want to be aware of film music, but I don't want it to force me to keep noticing it when it's an actual distraction from the story.

- There were several lines of dialog I simply couldn't understand, and I suspect I'll miss them on a second viewing. I'm glad that DVDs have captions available these days!

On an odd note, this is the first time I have ever seen the following notice in movie credits. It went something like this: "No person or entity associated with this film received payment or anything of value, or entered into any agreement, in connection with the depiction of tobacco products."

Has anyone else ever seen this before? In poking around online, I found this website for "Smoke Free Movies", which discusses the product placement that the tobacco industry has long been known for.

Bravo! I definitely recommended this movie. More of them should be this fun! Read more!

Authors Anonymous

When I heard about Authors Anonymous starring Kaley Cuoco, I suspected it might be a surprise little charmer of a movie, and it was. The premise is that a writers group becomes the subject of a documentary that begins filming just as one of its members, Hannah (Cuoco), lands first an agent, then a book deal, and then a big movie deal in quick succession. Not surprisingly, the other writers in the group have no idea how to handle Hannah's success, even as she remains down to earth and interested in their honest opinions of her work.

Hannah's fellow writers include the earnest, talented Henry (Chris Klein), who was already infatuated with Hannah but had not yet quite worked up his nerve to ask her out; Tom Clancy-wannabee "John K. Butzen" (Dennis Farina), who refers to himself in the third person at every opportunity; young pretender William, who walks the walk but doesn't actually write anything; Colette Mooney (Teri Polo), who's as highstrung as a racehorse and about as good a writer; and Colette's doting but clueless husband Alan Mooney (Dylan Walsh). Also sneaking in with an adorable cameo role is Tricia Helfer as John K. Butzen's German mail-order fiancee, who eventually hopes to become Mrs. John K. Butzen the Fourth.

What's fun about this movie is that it takes writerly cliches that really are based in reality and exaggerates them to a ridiculously funny degree. But there is still poignancy. Hannah is sweet and we want her to succeed, but it actually is sad that she's hardly read a book in her life. Henry, the one with the real talent, is unsure of himself and stuck in a rut that Hannah helps him out of, even though it's painful for him and not necessarily the path that he's hoping for. And even the obnoxious John K. Butzen, who quickly rushes his crappy Vietnam novel to a Chinese vanity publisher in order to have it come out before Hannah's book, is worthy of pity when he's sitting alone in a hardware store at his first so-called book signing. (One can picture him twenty years later, still insisting that the corrupt publishing industry is why he hasn't made the riches he deserves.) And for me, one of the most touching characters is Sigrid (Tricia Helfer); she really, truly believes in and tries to support John, until she finally has to face reality because he's incapable of doing the same.

The movie's not perfect; it tends to forget the documentary format for long stretches and then clumsily reintroduces it every once in a while. It doesn't have the brilliant biting wit of the black comedy faux documentary Drop Dead Gorgeous, for instance, and there's simply no way anyone would want to make a documentary about such an unproven group of writers anyway. But at the same time, I'm not sure if another format would have worked as well for this movie, because having the characters speak directly to the camera really adds a lot of humor. For instance, Hannah can't remember the word "metaphor" when she's trying to explain that her novel, Sleeping on the Moon, isn't really about people sleeping on the moon, and her mother has to prompt her to remember the name Jane Austen as someone who is doing really well and should "keep it up." Teri Polo is the real comedic standout as Colette, who unsuccessfully pretends to be happy for Hannah while desperately trying to draw attention back to her own presumed brilliance. She has one of the movie's funniest lines; when asked about her favorite writers, she shares that "Joyce Carol Oates has been known to bring me to actual orgasm." Dennis Farina and Dylan Walsh are also spot-on. In fact, there's not a single false note in the acting as far as I'm concerned.

Ultimately, this movie isn't at all realistic, but I didn't care one bit. The over-the-top exaggeration of "those writer types" mixed with just the right amount of sweetness made this movie a lot of fun. This probably went direct to DVD (which I note doesn't even have subtitles in English), but it's absolutely worth seeking out. And it's also worth mentioning that this is the only thing I've seen Kaley Cuoco in other than The Big Bang Theory, which I adore, and at no time did I see her as Penny instead of Hannah. She's also the executive producer on this film, so kudos to her on both counts.

Edited to add: I'm mortified that I'm a writer, this is a movie about writers, and I forgot to mention the person who wrote the movie! His name is David Congalton. Read more!

My Sister's Keeper (the movie)

Last week I saw My Sister's Keeper, starring Abigail Breslin, Cameron Diaz, Sofia Vassilieva, Jason Patric, and Alec Baldwin. The movie is based on the book of the same title by Jodi Picoult; it is considered by many to be her best work. I was slightly reluctant to see the movie, in part because I wasn't sure that the book's alternating first-person narration would translate well to the screen, and in part because I have been known to cry so hard during sad movies that I've given myself a migraine. (That actually happened to me when I saw Regarding Henry about a million years ago.)

Fortunately, I didn't quite give myself a migraine this time, although I did cry during this movie. A lot. The quick and dirty version is that a teenaged girl named Kate Fitzgerald is dying from a somewhat rare form of leukemia. Back when Kate was diagnosed as a little girl, the doctor suggested that her parents conceive a child specifically selected to be a perfect donor match for Kate. Hence Anna is born, and her cord blood and eventually her bone marrow help improve Kate's condition. Now, however, Kate has relapsed and has gone into kidney failure. Since Anna obviously has the perfect kidney for Kate, Kate's mother Sara assumes it's a done deal, until she is served with legal papers stating that Anna, at age thirteen (eleven in the movie), is suing her parents for the medical rights to her own body.

[Spoilers for both book and movie below.]

To go back to the source material, this was the first book by Jodi Picoult that I ever read. Although I don't normally read much mainstream fiction or "women's novels" (if that's an accurate description), I was so involved in the story that I stayed up until about three a.m. the first time I read it. I was also impressed by Picoult's skillful use of multiple first-person points of view. Every character except Kate speaks about how Kate's illness affects the entire family, and this technique allows the reader to seriously consider every angle of this very controversial subject. It was beautifully done.

However, the book also pulled a one-two punch in terms of the ending. The first whammy was that the real reason Anna instigated the lawsuit was because Kate had asked her to. Kate was ready to die, yet she knew her mother would never stop trying to force the doctors to take increasingly extraordinary measures to keep her alive, no matter how little quality of life remained, and no matter how it impacted Anna. I was floored when I read this, and moved by both Kate and Anna's bravery.

The second whammy was that Anna wins the case, the court grants her lawyer Campbell medical guardianship only Anna until she's a bit older, and then, on the way home from the trial (I cringe even to type that, because I know how ludicrous it sounds), they're in a car accident. Anna is declared brain dead, and Kate gets that kidney after all. Many readers were infuriated by this ending, which they saw as unrealistic and manipulative. I was shocked, and maybe a bit annoyed, but the ten-years-later epilogue, in which we hear Kate's voice for the first time, blew me away. Kate is an adult, miraculously in remission again but still deeply mourning Anna's death, and Anna turns out to be the sister whose death defines the family.

So for me, on the way in to see the movie, my questions were:

• How well will this translate to the screen?
  
• Will they change the ending?
  
• Do I want them to change the ending?

I realized pretty quickly that I probably didn't want them to change the ending. Whether people liked it or not, it was what it was. So back to the first question: how well did this book translate to the screen? Unfortunately, in spite of terrific acting by just about everyone -- and Joan Cusack needs a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role as the judge, by the way -- the movie just doesn't quite gel. It isn't terrible, and is in fact quite moving, but the alternating voice-over narration seems contrived rather than clever; each character's name is even flashed up on the screen the first time that character "talks", which is reminiscent of the book's chapter headings but just plain silly in this medium. The spoken narration also drives home how unrealistically deep and poetic each person's thoughts are, something that is much easier to overlook in the printed form.

Another issue is that Kate herself narrates large portions of the movie, taking away the book's brilliant construction, which showed how Kate's illness defines the family even when Kate herself is temporarily taken out of the equation. And finally, the movie has a confusing welter of lengthy flashbacks, including several clunky ones that literally happen mid-scene while the character gazes off into space, "thinking back." I almost expected the screen to go all wavy, like the TV sitcom cliché.

Before I go further, though, there are some things I think the movie does right. It wisely eliminates two of the book's subplots that would have overcrowded the film. Kate and Anna's brother Jesse, while still troubled and neglected, is no longer a serial arsonist. Campbell's love interest in the book, an old flame assigned by the court as an advocate for Anna, is completely absent from the movie, although Campbell's epilectic condition and his service dog remain. And I have to say, I think the casting was pretty inspired -- and I had been unsure about Cameron Diaz.

But. But but but but. For me, there is more wrong than right with this film, some of which has to do with the ending and some of which doesn't. I'm not without sympathy for the filmmakers, because that was quite a decision they had to make. Even if half of Picoult's readers loved the book's double-whammy ending, the other half probably hated it -- and any viewers who hadn't read the book probably would have stomped right out of the theater in disgust. So it doesn't surprise me at all that the filmmakers felt they had to change it. In the movie, then, Kate just dies, Anna then receives the now-moot winning verdict, and the whole family picks up and moves on. To be fair, it is revealed that Kate wanted Anna to bring the lawsuit, which is probably why the mother sorta kinda learns to let go, but in my opinion the revelation is clumsily handled and doesn't receive enough attention.

However, while the filmmakers' choice was not unexpected, it does surprise me that Picoult, according to her website, didn't have any control over it. I know perfectly well that 99 out of 100 authors have no hope of retaining any control over content when they sell the film rights to their work. But although I never would want to become a diva author, I know that if I had written that book, which was a bestseller, I sure as heck would have tried to retain some level of approval, because I would have known full well that any filmmakers would want to monkey with the ending. And since Picoult is a bestseller, she's got a lot better chance of calling the shots than do most writers. I'm dying to know if Picoult and her agent even tried, but of course that's their business, not mine.

In any case, what bothers me far more than the changed ending is the changed focus. This is not a movie about the rights of a child whom the parents have conceived for a particular purpose -- a purpose that might be physically and mentally detrimental to that child. Instead, it is a movie about a teenage girl dying from cancer, period. As such, it breaks no new ground. In fact, the review in People magazine states that "the movie wanders off track early, devoting too much time to an unlikely story line about the youngest child (Breslin) suing her parents for 'medical emancipation.'"

However unlikely that story line may be, it was the book's raison d'être. Which means that what I saw onscreen was not necessarily a bad movie, but it wasn't My Sister's Keeper.

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