12.7 Hours: When Nature Calls

For a supenseful, gut wrenching, teeth clenching movie experience it’s hard to top 12.7 hours, currently being considered for an Oscar nomination. It’s a story of determination, faith and courage and while everyone knows the outcome before even buying a ticket, at least half the audience can closely identify with the anguish of the protagonist.

The events depicted in the movie are well known and documented: a lone hiker chooses to ignore a “Closed for the Season” sign at a rest area in Moab, Utah, and suffers unspeakable horror as a result when his penis becomes frozen to a urinal in the stark, concrete block rest room. Ryan Rollins, the hiker, who actually served as a consultant during the making of the film agreed that the script captured the mood of the situation and added that he was eager to see the movie produced as a cautionary tale for those rugged individualists who think that the rules don’t apply to them.

“As a child I had managed to get my tongue stuck to frozen items on two separate occasions. Once to a flag pole on the playground in sixth grade and then again to the carcass of a dead moose during hunting season when I was 30. My buddies had ‘double-dog’ dared me, when we encountered the partially decomposed animal while hunting, and being rugged and proud I couldn’t very well walk away now, could I?” Rollins went on to describe the terror of being on all fours with his tongue effectively glued to the anus of what had once surely been a magnificent animal for several hours before being rescued by a park ranger who later sold the story to the producers of MTV’s “Jackass”.

In the movie, we suffer along with Rollins as his urge to urinate in the desolate landscape builds with each passing moment. We sense his relief as the deserted restroom comes into view with the wind driven sleet letting up just long enough for him to spot the facility, squatting on a frozen bluff above the Mongoloid River. When Rollins brushes aside the “Closed for the Season” sign, we identify with his bravado, which recalls the actions of the reluctant vigilante in “Death Wish”.  A hush falls over the audience as the surround sound captures the sound of that zipper coming down, the emergence of Ryan’s pink tool, the welcome gush of urine… and then the shock as the tip of Ryan’s penis contacts the lip of the urinal. Every male in the theater involuntarily crosses his legs as Ryan struggles against Mother Nature, who has his foreskin firmly in her grasp.

Some reviewers have seen this spine tingling moment as an Oedipal metaphor, Ryan desperately pulling away from his clinging mother who just won’t let go, while others see it as nothing more than what it appears to be: stupidity being caught with its pants down, so to speak.

What follows in the unfolding plot has earned the film an R rating, not to mention gasps of dismay and episodes of fainting among members of the audience. Ryan’s discovery of a rusted razor blade among the cobwebs on a nearby shelf offers up salvation and at the same time, grim realization that the man who leaves that isolated restroom will never be the same.

Hurt Locker: Realism That Rivals Godzilla

I don’t often rent movies just because of all the buzz, but I do make exceptions. When “Hurt Locker” came away with Best Picture and Best Director I figured, how could I lose? Alas, that was the same question I asked myself in Vegas when the dealer showed a three and I doubled down for my expected “can’t lose” blackjack.

 Director Katheryn Bigelow’s vision of Iraq is pretty superficial. She advances on the premise that the audience already knows why America is tromping around in this predominately Muslim country which is rather unfair, since thus far not even our leaders have figured that one out. Anyway, the story follows the exploits of Army Sergeant First Class William James, who finds himself assigned to a group of soldiers whose job is to find and defuse unorthodox explosives or IED’s (pronounced Eee EE Deeze). For some reason the Iraqis don’t cotton to having foreigners kicking down their doors and blowing up their sewage treatment plants, so they go around planting IED’s to give the occupiers something to distract them from kicking down doors and blowing up sewage treatment plants.

One thing to know about these military EOD units (Explosives Ordnance Disposal) is that they always manage to sucker one guy into doing the actual disarming of the explosives, and in Hurt Locker, the group that gets Sgt James has just lost their fall guy in an explosion, despite his wearing a really odd looking space suit, which he had thought would render him invincible in case of a blast. (see “sucker” above).

 Right off the bat we learn that James is a renegade: he’s petulant, uncommunicative, profoundly retarded and has a death wish. He can’t get it through his head that his new EOD unit is a team. He’s like the high school quarterback who refuses to throw a pass and insists on hogging the ball no matter what the score and no matter what the coach tells him. On the first mission with his new unit, he scoffs at the idea of using a robot to safely disarm an IED, which has been reported by either a well meaning Iraqi, or one who has sold tickets to those who want to see another American turned into ground beef.  Dripping testosterone, James dons the bulky space suit and toddles toward the roadside bomb.

 Note: In the opening scene of the movie we viewers had it drummed into our skulls that communication is the key to a successful mission in this dangerous game of explosives buggering. Constant contact between the guy in the space suit and his team mates lets everyone know exactly how far he is from the device, precisely who is watching the action from the sidelines and instantly alerts everyone to any action the space suit guy will take before he does it, thereby eliminating any unwanted surprises. James does none of this. Apparently in his younger days he was the butt of god knows how many “knock-knock” jokes so every time someone asks him a question (“how far are you from the device?”) he flashes back to “knock-knock” at middle school and instantly clams up. This causes Sgt Sanborn, the Black Guy on the EOD team, to mutter curses and rail against James much as did the football coach in James’ murky past.

 In Bigelow’s Iraq, we are re-acquainted with the Ugly American. Much to the disgust of the occupying soldiers, most Iraqis only speak the language they’ve been getting by with for about the last 6,000 years and have deliberately avoided learning English just to annoy the latest invading army. Since Iraqi interpreters in this movie are as scarce as snowboarders, the soldiers make do by shouting at the Iraqis. See, it’s a well known fact that if a “furriner” doesn’t understand American, well, you just keep repeating the same phrase louder and louder until he does. Works every time.

After presenting James as a purely self centered and generally despicable character for the first hour of the movie, Bigelow belatedly realizes that at this point the audience couldn’t care less if he gets dismembered by an IED or even buried alive by his own team members. In a jolting plot U-turn, James is given a soul; he suddenly cares deeply for a 12 year old street urchin who sells faulty pirated DVD’s to passersby gullible enough to take a chance. You know… like our Sgt James.  (See “profoundly retarded” above). Oh, and the kid also totes a soccer ball around, hence his nickname, “Beckham”. James lurches unconvincingly toward empathy with this pre-teen thug who competes with Iraq’s feral cats for sustenance in the war torn city. He has as much use for James as James has for him, which creates a symbiotic relationship reminiscent of head lice on a virgin scalp and about as endearing.

 Bigelow’s movie is peopled with individuals of dubious character and intelligence. At one point James and his squad stumble upon a stranded SUV surrounded by mercenaries who speak with British accents. Despite his stunted intellect James eventually figures out that these Blackwater stand ins aren’t Iraqis, but even he is puzzled by their plight: flat tire but no lug wrench. It seems that one of the hired guns has at some point hurled their only lug wrench at a band of attacking insurgents, which puts his IQ rating pretty close to that of our cowboy sergeant. These mercs are now huddled around the wounded SUV trying to figure out their next move. It has been a long and unproductive meeting until the arrival of the Americans who announce that they might have a suitable lug wrench in their Humvee. Alas, after 15 minutes of clanking and grunting the mercenaries figure out that the wrench is the wrong size. I would hate to see this brain trust try to untangle a cluster of last year’s balled up Christmas lights. One of James’ team announces that there may be another different size lug wrench in the back of their Humvee they can try….well, sure, since they always carry one that fits their vehicle lug nuts and one that doesn’t, right? Certainly sounds like something our Pentagon would go for.

Anyway, at this point and much to our relief, several of these incredibly dense mercenaries are put out of their misery by long range Iraqi snipers. Who knows, maybe one of the snipers is cheesed off for having had a lug wrench bounced off his noggin. James and Sgt Sanborn team up and take on these very efficient shooters with a sniper rifle of their own. They hunker down with Sanborn as the shooter and James as the spotter. As the hours drag by we get to see James share a box of juice with Sanborn. There’s only one straw, see, and remember that Sanborn is the Black Guy. This allows us to see James’ tolerance for other races, which is calculated to get him another plus on Bigelow’s score card.

 Remember James’ sudden doe eyed interest in the thuggish street urchin? Well, during another sweep through dusty residences, James comes upon the corpse of a male child with wired explosives stuffed inside him like Gummy Bears in a Mexican pinata. The bloody face of the corpse looks just like his young pal, Beckham. And about 50,000 other street children. This so incenses James that later that night he engages an Iraqi taxi to drive him to the bad side of town on a quest to find Beckham’s home; that would be Beckham the urchin not Beckham the British footballer. The mere fact that there is a bad side of town in a city that makes Detroit look like the Vatican speaks volumes about what we’re doing in Iraq in the first place. But never mind. In the dead of night the taxi wheezes to a halt in front of a crumbling structure James has decided must be Beckham’s residence. As he gets out he orders the taxi driver to “wait here” and to the surprise of no one except James (remember, “profoundly retarded”) the taxi promptly becomes a set of rapidly receding tail lights in the darkness. James pulls his trusty sidearm and proceeds to search the residence. He confronts a middle aged Iraqi scholar who offers him a drink and a seat at his table, referring to him as a “guest”. This unexpected courtesy knocks our hero’s mental state further off its wobbly axis and he goes jogging through the center of town holding his pistol, looking as out of place as a mercenary toting a lug wrench. He winds up back at his barracks, sullen and withdrawn…. like before only now he frowns a lot. This could be serious.

 As the film lumbers toward its inevitable (and eagerly awaited) conclusion, James leads several of his credulous team mates on a suicide mission that involves a lot of narrow alley ways, dark streets and shaky, hand held camera work. When the men become reticent and question the validity of the mission, James starts channeling Mel Gibson in Braveheart, exhorting his companions to be all they can be. Shamed into submission the team grudgingly goes along. To the surprise of no one except James one of the team members gets shot and the mission, whatever it was, is aborted. Later we see this wounded man being dumped into a helicopter while berating James as a loose cannon and mental defective. “This is what happens when you get shot!” he yells at our mentally shortchanged protagonist, who apparently up until this moment didn’t realize that his being an idiot in a war zone could negatively affect others.

 Toward the end of the film, with his tour ended, we glimpse James back in Ruttabaga, Alabama or wherever the hell he’s from, playing kissy face with his toddler son while his long suffering wife positively beams. Can this modern warrior be satisfied with mowing the lawn and shopping at the Piggly Wiggly? Can the captain of the Titanic be satisfied with ferrying passengers across the Atlantic without crashing into icebergs? In the final scene we see James back in Iraq doing what he does best, risking the lives of others for another 365 day tour.

 Hurt Locker is to Platoon what Plan 9 From Outer Space is to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Katheryn Bigelow may do better with her next film, she certainly can’t do worse.

Paranormal Activity?

I’m still kicking myself for the fee I paid at Hollywood Video for renting this snooze fest. There was a homeless guy outside the place who could have made better use of the money, even if he was going to spend it on Thunderbird Wine. Having seen the ads on TV where the audience viewing the movie seemingly gasps in horror, I had high hopes for this one. Alas, it was not to be. My right hand began itching for the remote control about 20 minutes into the film (driven perhaps by spirits?). Oh how I longed to fast forward as the protagonists went about their exceedingly boring activities, yet I resisted (restrained perhaps by some evil entity?) For those who don’t already know, the action of the story takes place in the bedroom of this unmarried couple, Katie and Micah. (The last time I encountered a dude named Micah, he was the sheriff in the TV series The Rifleman, which should have forewarned me….. precognition or happenstance?)

When I say “action”, I refer of course to non sexual activities occurring on bedsheets that go unwashed throughout the 21 days of the experiment. What experiment you ask? You’ll be sorry you asked. Well, see this Katie person has had a malevolent entity hot for her bod since she was a pre-teen. Doesn’t matter how many times she packs up and moves, the entity stays with her like a case of genital herpes. Anyway, Katie starts shacking up with Micah who has this really cool house in suburbia, which as far as we know, isn’t located on the site of some ancient graveyard. Katie has told Micah about Earl (a name I’ve given the Entity so I don’t have to keep typing “entity”). Micah is really impressed. “Geeze, he says at one point, how come I don’t have an entity hot for MY ass?” I’m kidding. He doesn’t say that. What he does say is that this would be a marvelous opportunity to catch some “paranormal activity” on video tape. See where we’re headed here? Despite dire warnings that paranormal critters are especially cranky about being captured on tape, Micah moves ahead with his project, carrying his excessively large and cumbersome video camera (and the audience) into every conceivable nook and cranny in the house. Except the bathroom when Katie is taking a shower or a dump, which says to me that Micah knows nothing abut baiting sexually repressed paranormal entities. But I digress. Micah sets up the video camera on a tripod so that the couple’s constantly unmade bed stays in the foreground. Before long, things start to happen. When I say “before long” I’m stretching the truth. Actually quite a bit of time goes by but thankfully Micah takes pity on us and fast forwards the video tape showing a couple in the throes of non passion, night after night. At one point the sheets billow out on Micah’s side of the bed but based on Katie’s facial expression, this is attributed to bad digestion and excessive protein in Micah’s diet. Just kidding. But we do see the bedclothes flapping around which in the world of ghost hunters  is pretty terrifying.

One morning while the couple is watching a tape of the night before, we see the bedroom door move. Ohmygod! Micah immediately uncorks Katie’s expensive bath talc and sprinkles it all over the floor, because as everyone knows, any paranormal who is stupid enough to get caught doing stuff on video is also stupid enough to fall for the old talc-on-the-floor routine. And he does, the very next night! Have Katie and Micah been saddled with a retarded entity or does it just act like one?

Time to call in a spirit expert. No, not a bartender, but a for real “paranormal researcher” who is invited to render an opinion. He patiently explains to the disappointed couple that while he is unsurpassed as an expert in certain spooky ghost stuff, he obviously doesn’t know jack about this type of spooky ghost stuff, implying that they are so dense they might take their Jeep to a maternity store for repairs. The only “demonologist” who can dispatch this entity, he says, is currently away on vacation (I’d sure like to hear the message on HIS answering machine: “I can’t get to the phone right now. If this is an emergency give the Pope a call”) Unable to shed light on the mysterious happenings chez Micah and Katie, the ghost hunter geek nevertheless can’t resist tossing out a chunk of wisdom ala Cliff Claven from Cheers: do not under any circumstances try to contact Earl using a Ouija board! Apparently this is like waving a pair of soiled panties under the nose of Tiger Woods and can only lead to unspeakable consequences. Can you guess what Micah does next? As Micah sets up the forbidden board, an agitated Katie waves her arms and growls at her paramour. Possession? No, she’s just upset that Micah doesn’t understand Earl’s motivation. Nor do we, for that matter, but perhaps this offers up an explanation of why Katie, who is rather busty, always wears a bra under her nightie. (Didn’t see that one coming did you?) Obviously she seeks to mitigate her allure to the lusty supernatural sasquatch haunting her existence.

As paranormals are wont to do, Earl stubbornly refuses to cooperate with Micah and his dime store Ouija board, apparently sitting in ghostland, arms folded, petulantly ignoring Micah’s taunts. Until the couple turns in for the night, that is, when Earl makes the board burst into flames, indicating that he is ready to try for second base with Katie.

As time goes by we see increasingly bizarre occurrences on the fast forwarded video tape: the door closes. And opens. And closes. At one point Katie, apparently sleepwalking, gets out of bed and stands looking at Micah for hours. Is she going to smack him with a pillow or do a seductive strip tease? Alas, neither occurs and it’s beginning to look like even Earl is getting bored with this do nothing couple. But wait…. now they find the charred Ouija board….. proof that whoever left footprints upstairs is smart enough to find the stairs leading to the first floor! This is getting serious! And look…. Katie is starting to get bruises. They summon the same geek who couldn’t help 15 minutes ago, and guess what? He still can’t help. And the only guy in the world who can is still on vacation. (Cruise in the Bermuda Triangle?)

By now Katie and Micah are so desperate that they keep doing what they’ve been doing all along: pissing off Earl the Entity and not putting their bed sheets through the wash cycle. As the 84 minute movie comes to its climax Micah meets his end amid extra loud thumping as he charges into a darkened hallway off the bedroom to save Katie who apparently wandered off looking for more bath talc. Suddenly Micah’s limp body is hurled at the video camera and Katie stalks out of the dark either possessed, sleepwalking or both. And we mortals are reminded that there are supernatural beings so powerful that they can cause fires, possess human beings, slam doors and flap bedsheets. But there’s not a thing they can do about being video taped. Unless they’re smarter than Earl.

Haunted House Flashlights

So there’s the young woman, scantily clad in her nightie, heart pounding, one hand to her mouth to stifle the pending scream, making her way down the cobwebbed stairs to the old dark cellar…. and right on cue the flashlight flickers and then goes out.

In all the years of Hollywood thrillers has there ever been an occasion where the ubiquitous battery powered light source has NOT failed at the crucial moment?! And you gotta figure that in this 21st century age, the people at risk in the movie you’re watching, must have themselves been watchers of movies where the flashlight ALWAYS goes out. And yet down into the cellar they go, all alone at midnight to investigate the strange noises that can only be coming from the gaping maw of whatever evil presence lurks below.

I’m thinking that in the world inhabited by movie teenagers with stunted intellects, there must be a Home Depot that has an aisle marked, “Haunted House Flashlights”. You get your choice among the many on display. Oh, here’s one that’s guaranteed to work only until sundown. And over here is one that flickers intermittently but will still throw feeble illumination until an axe splits the skull of the user. The cheaper models require constant jiggling and whacking with the palm of the hand to keep them winking coyly in the dark while the higher priced ones simply switch off when most needed….you know… right at the moment when the busty teenager forgets how to put one foot in front of the other and falls on her face as she attempts to flee. It’s got to the point where in any horror movie featuring a dim witted about-to-be victim wielding a flashlight, I start counting down the seconds until the device fails. Just once I’d like the unfortunate starlet to be found horribly murdered and gratuitously dismembered but with the flashlight lying nearby STILL WORKING!

The Age of Stoopud

You can lead a horse to water but when you get there he’s still a horse. Or is he? Maybe he’s teabagger/death-er/birth-er. “The Age of Stoopud”, a new documentary by Michael Moore, explores the vast wasteland that exists between the ears of everyday Americans as he follows them on their coast to coast  odyssey for purpose.  Living in the age of unreason, which began with the election of Ronald Reagan, Americans have seen their fortunes wane and their values warped by the phenomenon of “conservative” radio, television and daily newspapers wholly owned by corporate interests determined to mold their gullible target audience into unknowing dupes. As becomes blatantly obvious in the film, the America of our forefathers has been sliding inexorably into the toilet bowl of history. The country whose manufacturing base and standard of living used to be the envy of the world has become the planet’s largest exporter of jobs and Treasury IOU’s with a shrinking middle class that depends on credit cards to support its downwardly spiraling  lifestyle.
Touring the nation’s schools, Moore interviews teachers and administrators who acknowldege that they have given up on education in favor of teaching students to pass multiple choice tests. “Those who can’t do, teach, says Merlin Ferguson, superintendent of education in Akron, Ohio, “and those who can’t teach usually wind up teaching high school students how to completely fill in the little boxes and circles on the answer sheets.” Economists point to statistics that reveal American schools turning out semi-literate burger flippers while China and India crank out engineers and physicists like link sausages. “It’s getting more and more difficult for U.S. high school graduates to find work, says leading economist Paul Krugman, “there are only so many minimum wage jobs to go around and most of those are being taken by undocumented workers who don’t demand outrageous perks like bathroom privileges.”
In an attempt to understand the netherworld of right wing broadcasting, Moore goes undercover to discover how Fox News develops its daily portions of nonsensical gibberish for the masses. “I was able to walk right into one of their editorial  meetings where they decide what to cover each day. You see, because I’m morbidly obese and pasty white they naturally assumed I was one of them.” Moore goes on to reveal how subjects like healthcare reform are picked apart in order to find out- of -context quotes and scary sounding subject headings that can be manipulated. “End of Life Choices” for instance, which covers living wills and hospice care , becomes “Government Ends Your Life: You Have No Choice”.  A red telephone in the center of the table at the meeting connects directly to John Boehner (pronounced Boner) the House minority leader to make sure that all talking points are locked in. Corporate sponsors who fund Fox News are the same as those who donate to Republicans in congress, so the “follow the money” strategy of journalistic investigation is amply demonstrated in the film. “You might think that Americans are too smart to be manipulated like first graders on a special education bus, but it turns out that those on the bus are light years ahead of this country’s right wing population,” said Moore.  He points out that for decades the GOP has been able get average Americans to routinely vote against their own self interest. Representative Boehner himself has gone on record in this regard. “The GOP voted against the 40 hour week, against paid overtime, against paid vacations, against workplace safety, against Social Security, against Medicare, against Medicaid, against unions…. and yet we tell the yokels that we’re ‘the party of the working man’ and they believe it! It is truly remarkable. Of course, we have a lot of help from ex-carnival barkers like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, these guys could sell condoms to the Pope.”
Moving on, the documentary touches on the influence of  the weird and supernatural on the least educated of the populace. “Shows about ghost hunting and UFO’s have replaced wrestling and roller derby on TV these days”, says David Ackerman of Northwestern University’s communications department, and the same people are watching them, a can of beer in one hand and a remote control in the other. Corporations that want to divert attention from  their pollution of the environment and poisonous food products sponsor these as well as the ever increasing flood of ‘reality programs’ where witless viewers  watch even more witless participants being tortured and humiliated during prime time. It’s like the last days of the Roman empire where the population was held spellbound watching gladiators at the Coliseum while the barbarian hordes sacked the cities.”

Moore ends the film on a lighter note, showing statistically that in the 21st century, America’s melting pot is more likely to contain frijoles than mulligan stew, and that the street names and store fronts are becoming unintelligible to the dwindling white population as Koreans and Chinese snap up the properties that once were considered strongholds of the Anglo Saxon demography. As the credits roll, white elementary school students are shown struggling to learn the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish and Korean while their unemployed parents carry signs outside on the sidewalk  raging impotently against a tidal wave that has already swept them out to sea.

Crazy for Christ

Bankrolled by Operation Rescue and T.B.E. (Tea Bagging Enterprises) this documentary follows two religious lunatics as they roam the country visiting abortion clinics, movie theaters showing R rated movies and public schools among other places,  in their quest to “shovel the steaming word of God into the mouths of unbelievers”. Begun as a screed against abortion, the producers of the movie enlisted the aid of well known anti-abortion activist Randall Terry who volunteered to write the unscripted project. Terry, who is himself the product of a botched abortion, is fond of  saying that “belief in Jesus is like a wad of chewing gum stuck to your shoe: it’s with you everywhere you go and tends to screw up other peoples’ carpets”. Only a few weeks into the making of the film, Terry decided to enlist the aid of Gregg Cunningham, a follower of Christ well known for pushing the envelope when it comes to in-your-face confrontations with ordinary people. “Folks don’t have to like me, says Cunningham, who home schools his twelve children, “but they do have to stand still while I smear nuggets of the Lord’s blessings all over their faces.” The just completed documentary was screened for critics on Saturday at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, where curious onlookers watched gibberish spouting “truth talkers” flopping around on the ground frothing at the mouth and speaking in tongues before the showing. Neil Ferguson, a reviewer for the Lamb of Light, a Christian periodical was enthusiastic about the 90 minute film. “Terry and Cunningham were definitely guided by the Lord in their decision to follow Minnie and Gabriel Crockett around this great nation, said Ferguson, “both of them had just recently been released from federal custody for mooning the White House and were anxious to get back to doing God’s business.” He went on to describe a scene from the movie where Gabriel Crockett had burst into the lobby of a theater in Hollywood and had dropped a load of God’s business in front of a Coming Soon display of the new Sam Rami horror film, “Drag Me to Hell”. Ferguson chuckled as he added, “that Gabriel is a caution. He wears these drawstring pajama pants like they issue in mental hospitals, so he’s always ready to squirt the Word whenever the spirit moves him. And that Minnie! She’s a holy roller on wheels… literally… she wears these roller skates 24/7 and goes rocketing past womens’ health centers screaming Bible passages and giving toots off the airhorn strapped to her back. It’s refreshing to see such dedication in a young couple these days”. Reached by phone on the set of a new documentary, Randall Terry expressed regret over the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller, dubbed “Tiller the Killer’ by the religious right. “I wish I would have known what the shooter had in mind, said the anti-abortionist, “I would have jumped at the chance to bless his bullets. What a miracle worker; I wish we had ten thousand more just like him.”

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Let’s get one thing cleared up right out of the gate. In this remake the earth doesn’t stand still. Keanu Reeves does. Alot. Apparently the producers of this sci fi recycle couldn’t find a ventriloquist dummy to stand in for Klatu, the visitor from outer space, so they got Keanu instead. He delivers his unemotional lines unemotionally, which is pretty much his trademark, as the special effects engineers struggle to move the action along. Who is he?  (He’s Klatu, haven’t you been paying attention?) Why is he here? What does he want? He tells Jennifer Connelly that he’s come here “to save the earth”. Naturally, we all think he means us humans, but no. Who would have thought Keanu Reeves capable of nuance, but there you go. he means what he says, he’s here to save the planet. Oh sure, he’s gonna see to it that a few squid and bacteria survive, but the human race is outta here. It seems that humans have so badly screwed up the planet’s ecosystem that if Klatu doesn’t bikini wax the globe it soon won’t be habitable for the new tenants. How would you like to have Klatu as a landlord? Instead of evicting you for putting cigarette burns in the carpet he calls in a mafia hit squad to exterminate your whole family. Anyway, we move through the required chase scenes and bumbling attempts by our military to destroy the animated bowling ball that brought Klatu to Central Park, and before you know it, a cloud of CGI termites borrowed from “Red Planet” are loosed upon the world. These little guys can eat through anything from diamond tipped drills to stale Cheetos and whip around like a cloud of animated locusts, doing more damage to our infrastructure than George Bush’s administration. In the end, the only thing that saves us from extinction is a weeping Jennifer Connelly wrapping her arms around a screechy little black kid saying things like, “I love you, too”. Klatu eyeballs this crying jag and is moved to recall his termites. “There is another side to you”, he says, addressing the tearful Connelly, something both Klatu and Keanu Reeves are sorely lacking.

Jumper

What if you could just think of a location, any place on earth and … poof!…. there you are. (“Poof” means arriving instantaneously, not turning gay). Well, that’s the premise of this film, but right out of the gate you have to wonder about protagonist David Rice (see “poof” above). I mean, hey… he’s 15 when he develops this fantastic ability, and what does he do with it? Does he zip into the girls’  locker room of the local high school? Or oven the local college? Nah, he steals money from banks leaving prank IOU’s. As the plot line develops (unravels?) David gets better at this zapping around and does cool things like relaxing on the head of the Sphnix with a cool drink, but still doesn’t have that carpe diem moment. Instead he meets another Jumper named Griffin who regales him with tales of a group of religious nutbags called Paladins who spend their days zapping jumpers with cattle prods, apparently annoyed that these talented young people are wasting their God given talent by not appearing in convents in the dead of night to get an eyeful of naked nuns. Okay, I made that part up.  The Paladins just don’t like jumpers and are a real buzz kill throughout the movie, because just when you think David might be contemplating those locker rooms, here comes Paladin Samuel Jackson and his gang to sprinkle dog turds on the party. If there is one thought the viewer is left with once the film credits roll, it’s that if David were suddenly given the gift of invisibility, he’s probably screw that up too.

Let the Right One In

Originally the title of this Swedish film was to be “Don’t Let the Wrong One In But Do Let the Right One In if you are Absolutely Sure”. Unfortunately the Swedish word for absolutely when translated into English sounds suspiciously like Granny’s elderly buttcrack, so they settled on the shorter title. No matter, though, because this practically unknown study of  a pubescent vampire totally kicks ass. Gone are the Hollywood trappings of vampire lore with holy water, crucifixes, extended fangs, bats, and special contact lenses. What we are left with is the notion that vampirism is not of the supernatural realm, but is actually a disease that is transmitted through the bite of an infected individual. Still, though, when one is “turned” he or in this case she, ceases to age in body image, although the mind continues to develop. Imagine what it must be like to have a chronological age of 200, with the wisdom gained by living so long, yet be trapped in a body arrested in the physical development of a young girl, just as the sex hormones are about to go into overdrive. Thus we are introduced to Eli, the not undead vampire who lives with an older man in kind of a Dracula/Renfield relationship. This guy takes care of the details of ordinary life like renting an apartment and ripping the throats out of passersby so that Eli can feed from a plastic bucket rather than staying up past her bedtime to hunt for victims in the neighborhood. Oskar, the 12 year old boy who lives next door, forms an unlikely friendship with Eli as both see themselves as outcasts in Swedish society. Oskar slowly comes to know of Eli’s true nature, but doesn’t fear her. She teaches him to stand up for himself against the local bullies who ceaslessly taunt him. And Oskar teaches Eli how to communicate with Morse Code (dot-dot-dash-dot-dot). The only thing about Eli that horrifies Oskar is her smattering of pubic hair which he glimpses along with the viewers of the movie. (Wonder how that got past the censors?) The overall pace of the movie is somewhat languid, but interspersed with moments of stark violence that serve to remind us that children are not always what they seem to be. The DVD has dubbed in English that is at times distracting due to its odd delivery, but over all the movie is fascinating.

Gran Torino

Remember what they said about the Ford Pinto?  If you slammed it in the ass it would explode. Well, there you have the theme for Gran Torino, which should have been called Ford Pinto. Clint Eastwood, bitter Korean War veteran lives next door to a boatload of Korean immigrants who he assumes are all about punking the grizzly misanthrope in his wrinkled ass.  What else can he think? He went off to Korea to exterminate the whole tribe, came home when he ran out of bullets, and damn if they didn’t follow him home! And just to add fuel to the flames, the Korean grandma spits lugies whenever she sees him and her troubled teen grandson (aren’t they all?) tries to steal Clint’s Ford. But wait… is there a smart ass female in the mix, too? You have to ask?

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