Tag Archives: movie review

August 1, 2016 · 2:57 pm

The Story Continues…

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I find myself caught up in the story once again. Netflix put a new monster-movie series out there with eight episodes starring a Dungeons & Dragons-playing group of middle school kids, a psychically powerful girl-experiment named Eleven, an assortment of dysfunctional adults, star-crossed teen romantics to use as potential monster food, and a creepy mouth-headed monster from the “upside down” to eat them all. How could I not binge-watch such a thing?

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This binge-watching addiction comes at a time when I have other things on my mind. My aging parents are in poor health and have a critical doctor’s visit coming up this week. Bank of America has decided to experiment on me to see what happens if they sue me for the total amount of my debt, plus court costs, plus additional fees for betraying them by going to Wells Fargo, plus additional additional fees just because they don’t like me and think I’m ugly. I am awaiting a call from a potential lawyer-advocate to help me even as I am writing this. I am also planning how to live without money until the total is payed off in garnished pension, seized property and bank accounts, and whatever other way they can squeeze more money out of me. Some monsters are all mouth. This of course comes after I completed a program of debt resolution and paid off all my other creditors. When I called Bank of America, they didn’t seem to know what happened to the debt, so they did not participate in that. Were they plotting evil, or just that stupid? Such questions go into the making of a monster. Perhaps a monster movie television series on Netflix was precisely what I needed.

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The only episode I haven’t watched yet is the last installment. Potentially the monster gets its comeuppance. That’s what the lawyer, a consumer rights attorney, promised me in his letter. It also is what the kids in Stranger Things are promising as they prepare to enter the monster’s lair.

Why do I need to see the ending of the story so badly? Because when we reach the end of our life course, the happy ending, in real life, does not overcome death and endings. We live our time on Earth, reach the end, and then we are no more. Only the story continues. New lives and new adventures begin, only to proceed relentlessly to their ending. Even when the human race’s story comes to end and there is no more life on Earth, the story continues. You have to be caught up in that. There is no other choice. The things you dread stalk you and eventually catch you, and the happy ending is bound up in how you handle it along the way.

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Filed under angry rant, autobiography, commentary, ghost stories, horror movie, humor, monsters, review of television, science fiction

Tagged as bankers and other villains, humor, monster movies, movie review, Netflix binging, Stranger Things, televison shows

July 29, 2016 · 4:22 pm

The BFG (a review by the Uncritical Critic)

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I was predisposed to like this movie from the outset. After all… Spielbergh… Roald Dahl… a musical score by John Williams… almost Robin Williams as the BFG! But I don’t like this movie after all. I LOVE it!!!

I am easily stunned by gorgeous settings, CGI magic, and artistically done visuals. I am easily captivated by cute and gifted young actresses like the one who plays Sophie, Ruby Barnhill. And I am especially won over by the smiling face of the BFG himself. He reminds me so clearly of my Great Grandpa Raymond (who was no less a magical being in my life than the BFG is in Sophie’s).

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The fact that the BFG’s job in Giant Land is the capturing, bottling, mixing, and gifting of dreams is the most winning feature of all. And he uses it in the epic plan to overcome the bestial, cannibalistic, (and possibly Trump supporters) other, bigger giants. He is a metaphor for the story-teller himself… enduring hardships and harrowing adventures to capture, package, and deliver the stories that are so important to life and people’s ultimate happiness. It is true for Roald Dahl, the darkly silly genius who wrote the story. It is also true for Steven Spielberg, the craft-master and movie-maker who put it on film. It is true also for the magician of movie music, John Williams. I hope, someday, it will also be true for me.

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So many things about this movie are the epitome of the best movie-theater experiences. I do not understand how it could’ve done so poorly in the box office. I believe it will become one of those beloved and much-watched DVDs like Spielberg’s previous fairy-tale masterpiece, Hook, did. I pray that it won’t simply become an overlooked asterisk in the history of cinema. It is too good of a movie experience for that.

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Filed under artists I admire, goofy thoughts, humor, movie review

Tagged as BFG movie, humor, John Williams, movie review, Roald Dahl, Spielberg, uncritical critic

May 14, 2016 · 6:11 pm

Captain America : Civil War (A Muck Review)

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Muck Man took his family to see the new Captain America movie last night. I told you they would, since they are a superhero family just learning how to be a superhero family with odor-based super powers. They all loved it, as was to be expected. But it was a great movie experience because it was full of unforeseen surprises.

mucklad59 The first big surprise came from Muck Lad. Muck Man chose the Friday showing at Valley View Mall because Muck Lad had to work both Saturday and Sunday and couldn’t attend otherwise. His job at the Asian Market making and serving boba tea is the most important factor in his life right now. He needs the money to buy a gaming computer. You know how important that is to a teenager in this day and age. But when the time came to go to the movie, as much as he really wanted to see it, his headache was too much to allow him to go. He needed to stay in the Muck Cave with Muck Dog and play RPG computer games instead.

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The second big surprise came after Muck Momma drove Muck Man and Muck Girl… er, Muck Woman… to the mall and the movie actually began. Muck Man is such a big comic book fan that he read every Civil War comic book he could lay his smelly hands on back when it was a big multi-comic event thingy in the Marvel Universe. There must’ve been at least a hundred titles to track down, and either purchase to read multiple times, or find in the library to read when Mucky was supposed to be doing other more school-teachery things. And as the movie unfolded, besides the fact that there was a big disagreement between Iron Man and Captain America that made everybody choose up sides, nothing was the same at all! The story was good, and made sense in the context of the other Marvel Movies, but the details were all different and the story was completely new. Not only new, but better! Muck Man was fully prepared to face one of the two major characters dying at the end of the movie, because that’s how the comic books turned out. But in point of fact, the movie found a much better way. Muck Man tells me I can’t explain that point further because spoilers are simply not allowed in a world where heroes are real.

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Muck Girl… er, Muck Woman… was surprised at how much she liked the character of Spider Man played by young Tom Holland. The character was played as a teenager. A rather handsome, wisecracking teenager with some killer superhero moves. And a new Spider Man movie was promised at the end. Muck Girl… er, Muck Woman… was enthralled in ways only a Muck teenage girl… er, woman… can be.

And the movie was seriously funny. That was, perhaps, the best surprise of all (even if it is an oxymoron). There were more light-hearted moments than tragic ones, more laughs than tears. It taught Muck Man and his Muck Family a very important lesson about how to be a superhero. Being all dark and violent and Batman-y is fine for DC superhero movies, but it is also the reason we don’t love them as much.

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And the delayed-for-another-time surprise was the trailer we got to see for Dr. Strange on the big screen. Muck Girl… er, Muck Woman… is not-so-secretly in love with Benedict Cumberbatch too. The Muck Family’s plans for movies in November are now set.

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Filed under Avengers, comic book heroes, daughters, heroes, humor, movie review

Tagged as Captain America, Civil War, humor, Marvel Movies, movie review, surprises

April 24, 2016 · 4:52 pm

Jungle Book

Last night my family and I went to the new Disney movie Jungle Book directed by John Favreau. It was the movie version I have been waiting for all my life.

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The amazing thing about this movie is the way it took the book and layered its themes and central idea on top of the classic 60’s Disney cartoon. The music is still there and intact, though mostly moved to the end credits. The kid is still cute and mostly vulnerable, at least until the conclusion. And they have still given the Disneyesque comedic touch to the character of Baloo the bear, voiced by comedian Bill Murray in the this incarnation. But this is a live action movie and the kid-friendly Bowdlerization of the original story is a thing no longer.

A classic book illustration by E.J. Detmold

Fortunately for the young actor, Neel Sethi, they don’t require him to play the entire movie naked as would be required by a strictly by-the-book approach. They allow him the Disney-dignity of the cartoon red loin cover. But the sense of a human child facing the violence of the jungle naked, armed only with his creature-appropriate natural defenses, has been put back into the story. This version literally has teeth and claws. We see the boy’s body wounded and scarred during the course of his life in the jungle. And at a time of crucial confrontation, Mowgli takes the defense stolen from man village, a torch of the feared red flower, and throws it away into the water, facing the terrible tiger with only his wits and the abilities of his fangless, clawless human body. Thus, an essential theme I loved about the book when I was twelve is restored. Man has a place in the natural world even without the protections of civilization.

The story-telling is rich and nuanced, with multiple minor characters added. Gray Brother has been restored to Mowgli’s family. The fierce power of Mowgli’s wolf mother has been written back into the screenplay. And the character of Akela is given far more importance in the story than the cartoon could even contemplate. Although his role in aiding Mowgli to kill the tiger Shere Khan has been taken away from him, Akels’s death becomes the central motivation bringing Mowgli and Shere Khan together for the final inevitable confrontation. And this movie does not shy away from the reality of death as the cartoon did, resurrecting Baloo at the end and Kaa’s attempts to eat Mowgli being turned into a joke (though I would like to note if you have never read the book, Kaa is not supposed to be a villain. He was Mowgli’s wise and powerful friend in the book). Even the tiger survives in the cartoon version. This is no longer a cute cartoon story with a Disney sugared-up ending.

I will always treasure the 1960’s cartoon version. I saw it at the Cecil Theater in Mason City, Iowa when I was ten. I saw it with my mother and father and sisters and little brother. It was my favorite Disney movie of all time at that point in my life. I read and loved the book two years after that, a paperback copy that I bought with my own money from Scholastic book club back in 1968, in Mrs. Reitz’s sixth grade classroom. That copy is dog-eared, but still in my library. But this movie is the best thing that could possibly happen to bring all of that love of the story together and package it in a stunning visual experience.

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Filed under art criticism, humor, movie review, Uncategorized

Tagged as classic Disney cartoons, humor, John Favreau, Jungle Book, movie review, Mowgli, Rudyard Kipling

February 14, 2016 · 5:22 pm

Binge-Watching Two

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Having successfully binged on the current first season of the television series Quantico, I was determined to try something different on the second try. I turned to the HBO series Band of Brothers. Now, I admit, being a war buff of the worst kind in every way, I have seen the entire thing before when it was broadcast on TBS back in 2003. The thing is, I did not have all the tools at that time necessary to fully appreciate and understand the dramatic arc of the story. I found it practically impossible to keep up with all the many characters who come and go so quickly. Some are introduced for the first time in the same episode in which they are killed. Some are wounded, leave for an episode or two… or four, and then return as if we are supposed to remember them in their entirety. So the secret magical spell I employed this time around for better and more intimate understanding is… I read the damn book.

Yes, the uncritical critic took on Stephen Ambrose’s masterpiece, Band of Brothers.

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Having read the book, I now had all the background information I needed on each of the characters. I could begin to match names and faces from the cast list of each episode with the real people I read about in the book, and the real people who matched those characters in the movie from the brief interview segments at the start of several episodes. I began to understand why so much of the film was devoted to the stories of Major Dick Winters, C. Carwood Lipton, and Sergeant Don Malarky… these being men who led Easy Company of the 101st Airborne through the most terrible parts of the war and lived to tell the stories that got made into the book and then the series. I really began to appreciate the heroics of people like Sergeant “Wild Bill” Guarnere who found out his brother had died in combat in Italy the night before the big D-Day parachute jump, and ended up losing his leg in the Battle of the Bulge, at the defensive stand in Bastogne. I learned more about the key leadership role of Bull Randleman who was separated from Easy Company in Einhoven and spent a night hiding from the German troops during the failed Operation Market Garden. I felt the deep hurt felt by people like Eugene “Doc” Roe the combat medic as he tried and repeatedly failed to treat horrible war wounds. They are not just characters in a war movie any more. I feel like I know them as people.

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Things about war and good war movies leave me in tears constantly. They grind up my soul and leave me sick at heart that people could be guilty of such things. I almost had to look away at times during the concentration camp episode.

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But ultimately it feels like a series like this is good for the soul. You can’t truly know how good and heroic people can actually be until you see how they live through and conquer these terrible experiences. And it is good to see an excellent book brought faithfully to life like this. It helps me lie to myself that writers can have a worthy effect upon life, the universe, and everything.

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Filed under movie review, TV as literature, TV review

Tagged as Band of Brothers, binge watching TV, book review, movie review, Stephen Ambrose, television as literature

January 17, 2016 · 8:12 pm

Big Eyes

141202210752_margaret_keane_304x171_margaretkeane Yesterday, before the big game, I watched the DVD I bought of Tim Burton’s Golden Globe Award movie, Big Eyes. It is the true-story bio-pic of an artist I loved as a kid, Margaret Keane… though I knew her as Walter Keane.

This movie is the bizarre real-life tale of an artist whose art was stolen from her by a man she loved, and supposedly loved her back. I have to wonder how you deal with a thing like that as an artist? I live in obscurity as an artist. My art has been published in several venues, but I have never been paid a dime for it. All I have ever gotten is publication in return for “exposure”, and limited exposure at that. But my art always brought vigor, joy, and light to my career as a school teacher. My art was always my own, and had either my own name on it, or the name Mickey on it. I shared my drawing skill in ways that directly impacted the lives of other people. It enriched my “teacher life”.

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Mrs. Keane’s hauntingly beautiful big-eyed children appealed to the cartoonist in me. They expressed such deeply-felt character and emotion, that I was obsessed with imitating them. In fact, the “big-eye-ness” of them can still be detected in some of my work. I remember wondering how these children, mostly girls, could be drawn by a grown man. What was his obsession with little girls? But the true story reveals that he was a man so desperate to have art talent and notoriety that he put his name on his wife’s work, made her paint in secret, and eventually convinced himself that it was actually his. He had a real genius for marketing art, and he invented many of the art-market ploys that would later inform the careers of homely artists like Paul Detlafsen and Thomas Kinkaid. One wonders if Mrs. Keane could’ve ever become famous and popular without him.

The movie itself is a Tim Burton masterpiece that reveals the artist that lives within the filmmaker himself. I love Burton’s movies for their visual mastery and artistic atmosphere. They are all very different in look and feel. Batman was very dark and Gothic, inventing an entirely new way of seeing Batman that differed remarkably from the 60’s TV series. Edward Scissorhands was full of muted, pastel colors and gentle humor. Alice in Wonderland was full of bright colors and oddly distorted fantasy characters. Dark Shadows was Gothic melodrama in 70’s pop-art style. This movie was true to the paintings that inspired it and visually saturate it. It is beautiful and colorful, while also serious and somber. It makes you contemplate the tears in the eyes of the big-eyed waifs in so many of the pictures. It is a movie “I love with a love that is more than a love in this kingdom by the sea”… if I may get all obsessive like Edgar Allen Poe.

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So, there you have it. Not so much a movie review as an effusion of love and admiration for an artist’s entire life and work. I am captivated… fascinated… addicted… all the things I always feel about works of great art.

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Filed under art my Grandpa loved, artists I admire, artwork, movie review

Tagged as artwork, big eyes, Margaret Keane, movie review, Tim Burton

January 3, 2016 · 4:47 pm

Monkey-Wild About “Peanuts”

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Yesterday the Peanuts Movie came to the dollar movie theater in Carrollton. And my two kids at home and me went to it. I invited my wife, but with the righteous indignation of a Jehovah’s Witness unshakable in her beliefs, she said, “Why would I want to go to a Christmas movie?” She associated it not with the beloved comic strip in the newspapers, but with the old Christmas special. And she would not be talked into it. It is a matter of faith, after all. Celebrating Christmas, naturally, loses you the chance to live happily ever after on a paradise Earth… after Jehovah God smites all the wicked people and all the deluded people who never worshiped him properly using his proper name, and also that rude postman my wife doesn’t particularly like. Of course, it is not a Christmas movie. The only Christmas part it has in it is a brief Christmas carol from the old TV special that Snoopy ruins. So God didn’t punish us for enjoying this movie… at least, not yet.

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We unrepentantly enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed it as a culmination of more than 50 years of reading and laughing at Charles
Schulz’s satire of the uncertainties of childhood as they affect the whole of our adult lives. My kids loved it because it is an excellent cartoon that is filled with hilarious moments that trace directly back to the comic strip.

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The central story is about Charlie Brown’s self doubts mixed with his never-ending crush on the little red-haired girl. In his own hesitant, hide-behind-the-bushes style, Charlie pursues her and plans how he might win her heart. In the comics, it never worked out. He always failed. He was always the lovable loser, and the red-haired girl never noticed.

I was inspired to write a poem about it because I could so deeply identify with his crisis of confidence. Here is that sappy poem;

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