Capricorn One: Movie Review

(Movie Review)

Why I Saw This Movie

So, as I just posted yesterday, I'm back from Tet holidays in the Provinces.

But the wife and kids are staying for one more week at the in-laws.  Which means I have a whole week to myself at the apartment.

Which means, I actually have time to watch a movie.

I had, after all, just gotten done lamenting how I wasn't able to see any movies in 2022 because it was so chaotic with the kids.  So, if I have some time without the kids, I really should watch something.  Who knows when the chance will come again?

Now, how to find a movie to watch?  We don't have a DVD player in the house.  And I'm not sure where I would even get DVDs in Vietnam even if we did have one.  We don't have a subscription to any streaming services.  And I'm always nervous about getting viruses from illegal streaming sites.

So, I googled "movies on youtube" and found this Looper video: The 24 Best Free Movies On YouTube Right Now.  Capricorn One was one of the movies listed.  
I searched for it, and it is indeed on Youtube.  The link is HERE.  (Is it legally on Youtube?  I don't know.  It looks like it was uploaded 5 years ago, and it hasn't been copyright claimed yet.  We'll see how long the video stays up.)

After confirming that this video was indeed up on Youtube, I briefly read the top comments on the video:

* Get your popcorn. Have a seat. This one's a nail-biting CLASSIC! Great cast, great story. WATCH THIS ONE!

* A timeless classic, never get tired of watching this presentation.

* That movie had me on the edge of my seat the whole time....5 Stars!

Et cetera.

Well, I was sold.  So with no kids in the apartment, I curled up on the couch with some pizza, and played the movie.

Background Information

This is a government conspiracy thriller/suspense movie from 1978.  I'd never heard of it before, but apparently it was a hit at the time, even though it was independently produced.  It has a few twists and turns in it, so to say too much about it would be spoiling it.  But the main premise is that the government is faking a landing on Mars.  According to the Internet, this movie has since become a favorite among Moon Landing Conspiracy Theorists, although I believe the producers of this movie intended it purely for entertainment purposes.

Some Random Observations

The 1970s Style

My first thoughts watching this was "Man, it's been so long since I watched a movie from the 1970s."

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I feel like we as a society have more or less stopped watching old movies.  When I was growing up, there used to be old movies on TV all the time.  But now I feel like there's so much new content available on streaming services and Youtube, etc, that people just don't watch old movies anymore.  (As always, take my opinion with a grain of salt--I've been - living - abroad - for 20 years, so I'm out of touch with everything.  What's your take on the whole thing?  Do people still watch old movies?)

But watching this, I was immediately struck by how the style of 1970s cinema is so different than today's cinema.  The music cues were so different, for one thing.  Also, the style of dialogue and exposition was much different.  The characters would talk longer, and go on in a style that reminded me more of a stage-play than a movie.  I don't think any of that would make it into a movie nowadays.

And all the cigarettes that are all throughout this movie.  You definitely couldn't have that in a movie nowadays. 

As you would expect from a 1970s thriller, this one's a slow burn.  A lot of talking, and, compared to today's movies, not as much action.  So you've got to be in the right mood for it.  And I was.  So I enjoyed it for the most part.  It's a completely different style of movie than we're used to now, but if you get yourself in the right frame of mind, it can be fun.

The only thing I couldn't get into was that airplane chase scene at the end.  I'm sure it must have been very thrilling for 1978 audiences, but it just can't compete with the adrenaline thrills of today's movies. And I admit to being spoiled by today's movies.  And so, I found myself bored by the climax.  (During what should have been the huge action climax of the movie, my mind was wandering and I was thinking of other things.)

The Cast

A lot of famous people in this movie.

James Brolin--who is the father of Josh Brolin (an actor I've praised numerous - times - on - this - blog).  I think this was the first movie I've seen with James Brolin, but it was interesting to see the distinct resemblance between him and his son.  

Elliott Gould--My first introduction to Elliot Gould was on The Disney Channel in the 1980s, which used to replay those two-movies he did for Disney in the early 80s.  But Elliot Gould has since become a source of fascination to me.  I mean, he was such a big star in the 1970s.  And then he just seemed to have disappeared after the 70s finished.  (According to Wikipedia, he never stopped working.  If you look at his filmography, he's definitely been in a lot of stuff over the years.  But he stopped being a huge star a long time ago.)  But anyway, Capricorn One is in 1978, so it's still when he was a star.

(For previous Elliot Gould movies I've reviewed on this blog, see A Bridge Too Far, Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8, and Ocean's 13.)

O. J. Simpson--Still well-known nowadays, although for completely different reasons.  He gets a lot of screentime in this movie, but he doesn't have a lot of lines.  (According to this video, the director didn't think O.J. had a lot of acting ability, but was forced by the studio to cast him anyway, so he just gave O.J. very few lines.)

And other famous people as well: Sam Waterston (from T.V.s Law & Order), Hal Holbrook (who I had trouble placing in anything, but he definitely has the look of someone I've seen before in other stuff.), etc.

...and the acting from this cast is really good.  They all give good performances.  Elliot Gould is really charming in his role.  Hal Holbrook is suitably menacing, and also gives a couple of really good speeches.  James Brolin's character isn't given a lot of personality by the script, but he plays his part well enough. Sam Waterston's character is also under-developed, but the few scenes he has, he plays well.

So the acting is definitely a plus for this movie.

The Plot Holes

So, without giving too much away, this is a plot that doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.  There are a lot of things about this conspiracy which just don't make any sense.  (I won't go into all of them.  The list is too long, and it would take too long to explain.  You'll spot them easily enough yourself if you watch the movie.)  But the principle logical problem is the bad guys just don't seem serious about getting rid of Elliott Gould's character.

It's clearly established that they have the power to make people disappear when they want to.  (They disappear Elliott Gould's friend in a blink of an eye.)  But instead of just disappearing Elliot Gould's character, they come up with all these half-baked plots to get rid of him, none of which seem serious, or have any follow through.  (They shoot at him once, and then just seem to give up.  They cut the brakes to his car, but then don't do anything else.  They frame him for cocaine possession, but then allow him to post bail, etc.)

I tried to forgive this as much as I could while watching the movie, because I think this is a failing that is common to the genre.  Almost all suspense movies have this problem.  (To my mind, one of the best examples of this is a classic of the genre, North by Northwest, which is another movie in which the bad guys really should just quietly shoot the main character in the back of the head and have done with it, but instead they just concoct all these impractical ideas to kill him by other means.  That's just one example, but this problem is all through the genre, right?)

Whose Story Arc Are We Supposed to Be Following Anyway?

One of the odd things about this movie is that there's no real identifiable protagonist, at least not in the first half.

Dogged reporter Elliot Gould becomes the protagonist in the second half of the movie, but aside from a couple brief scenes setting up his character, he's not really in the first half of the movie much.

The 3 astronauts are definitely the characters who are put in a dilemma that they have to resolve.  But they are given so few lines in the beginning of the movie, and really no personality, that it's impossible to get invested in their characters.

Hal Holbrook's character gets all the best dramatic speeches at the  beginning of the movie, but you can tell early on that you're not supposed to be rooting for him.

So whose story arc are we supposed to be following here?

On the one hand, this lack of an identifiable protagonist is a real weak point for the movie.  But on the other hand, it kind of made the movie more interesting.  Because I didn't know what the movie was trying to do, it made it really hard to predict what the movie was going to do next.  Were the astronauts going to be killed of midway through the movie?  Well, they might be.  I mean, the movie seemed to have deliberately kept me from getting overly attached to their characters, so maybe they were going to killed off.  Who knew?

By about the last third of the movie, things became a lot more predictable.  But up until then, I really didn't know where we were going with this.

Also, there were a few characters and story arcs that were set up at the beginning of the movie, and then just abruptly dropped.  That whole political arc, about the aggressive senator who wanted more support for the space program, and his rivalry with the vice-president, and the President's lack of support for the space program--all of that got a big set-up at the beginning of the movie, but then just got dropped.  What was going on with that?

It's one of those things that increased my interest in the movie at the time I was watching it.  (There seemed to be some interesting things being set up, and I was curious to see where they would go.)  But looking back at the movie now that it's finished, the lack of resolution just seems strange.

And speaking of a lack of resolution...

The Ending

So, while I was watching this movie, I was thinking to myself that older movies usually have long drawn out endings. (Is that right, or am I confused?  I feel like that's the way older movies usually operate.)

So I was fully expecting that after the climax of the movie, there would be several scenes wrapping up the loose ends.

But no, there were no scenes wrapping up the loose ends.  The movie just ends shortly after the climax.

So, what happened to those other two astronauts?  Were they killed, or were they just captured?

What happened to that guy from NASA that disappeared?  Was he killed off?

Did the bad guys get their comeuppance and get arrested in the end?  I guess we're meant to assume that they did, but I feel like it would have been more satisfying to see it.

The Dialogue

The dialogue can be cheesy in a few spots.  And, as I wrote above, by today's standards, it seems to resemble a stage play more than a modern movie.

But, once you get into the old-style vibe of this movie, then the dialogue can be a lot of fun.  There's a few great speeches that are given.  Some of the scenes have a great snappy back-and-forth going on between different actors.

And as I mentioned above, the actors are all great at really selling this dialogue.  So the dialogue in this movie is pretty good for the most part.

Links

There aren't a lot of reviews of this movie on Youtube, but there were a couple videos I found useful:

* Everything you need to know about Capricorn One

* Capricorn One - Delightfully Devillish Review

* Mark Kermode reviews sci-fi classic Capricorn One

See Also

* The Dr. Seuss classic Fox in Socks makes an appearance in this movie

Rating:

4 out of 10 stars.  

Okay, that's me being a little bit harsh.  It was perfectly watchable, so maybe I should give it 5 out of 10 stars for being a more-or-less enjoyable 2 hours.  But I feel like I really should take an extra point off for all the script and plot problems.

Video Review:

Capricorn One: Movie Review

Thor: The Dark World

(Movie Review)

Why I Saw This Movie
This movie came out 5 years ago, so obviously I'm a bit late on this one.
Back in 2013, I wasn't entirely committed to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  I would see the movies if they were convenient, but I would just as happily not see them.
Lately, though, I've been getting more and more sucked in.  (The Marvel movies have really been getting better and better lately.  All of the recent Marvel movies from the past couple years have been really good: Civil War, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Spider-Man, Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Infinity War--all excellent.)

So, the more I get sucked into these newer movies, the more I want to go back and catch the ones I've missed so I can pick up on the continuity notes.  (Several of the Marvel movies since have referenced events in Thor: The Dark World.  For example Ragnarok, and Infinity War.)
I've been wanting to see this movie for the past couple years now, but kept waiting for it to be on T.V.  (I know in this day and age you can find everything off of the Internet, but I hate watching action movies on my small computer screen.  I preferred to watch it in style on the big television screen.)
For the past couple years I had bad luck.  I would always turn the TV on right in the middle of this movie, or right when it was ending.  But then, this morning, I was flipping channels, and I caught this movie right at the beginning.  So I watched it, and here I am with my review.

The Positives
* The coolest thing about these Thor movies is how they blend Norse mythology with comic books.  The 9 Realms.  The Rainbow Bridge.  Vanaheimr.  The Dark Elves.  When I'm watching these Thor movies, I keep thinking: "What kind of whacked out comic book writing is this?" Only to go to Wikipedia, and discover that most of this comes directly from the original Norse Mythology. 
I'm given to understand this was how Jack Kirby wrote the original comics way back in the 1960s, although--comic book geek though I am--I'm not well read in my Thor.
(I also mentioned this in my review of Ragnarok.)

* The interaction between Thor and Loki was good.

* In retrospect, you can see that even back in 2013 they were setting up a lot of the pieces for Infinity War.  It's kind of cool how intricately they had this all planned out.

Negatives
* Asgard was really visually appealing, but the dark world was really boring visually.

* The villains were really boring.

* I really liked Thor's three Warrior friends from the first movie.  They were played by delightfully quirky character-actors.  Plus I liked the idea of Thor having friends and teammates on Asgard, instead of just being a weird loner.
The good news is that they brought them all back for this sequel, but the bad news is that they were barely used.  (And what's worse is that they got killed of in Ragnarok, after again being barely used.  So... so much for those characters, I guess.)

* Natalie Portman wasn't really interesting in this movie.

The Review
You know, we had had so many really great Marvel movies lately, that I kind of forgot there was a period during phase 1 and phase 2 where a lot of these movies were pretty much just place-holders between the big event team-up movies.  But yeah, let's face it, some of these phase 2 movies were pretty forgettable.
This movie isn't bad.  It's competently done, and has a couple decent action scenes.
But it's not great either.  It's pretty meh.  The craziness of Asgard is under-utilized, and the new Dark World is just really boring.

Rating ;
4 out of 10 Stars.  (Maybe border-line 5 stars.)

Marvel Cinematic Universe Links:
1. Iron Man
2. The Incredible Hulk
3. Iron Man 2
4. Thor
5. Captain America: The First Avenger
6. The Avengers
7. Iron Man 3
8. Thor 2: Dark World
9. Captain America 2: Winter Soldier
10. Guardians of the Galaxy
11. Avengers: Age of Ultron
12. Ant-Man
13. Captain America 3: Civil War
14. Doctor Strange--Haven't seen yet
15. Guardians of the Galaxy 2
16. Spider-Man: Homecoming
17. Thor: Ragnarok
18. Black Panther
19. Avengers: Infinity War
20. Ant-Man and the Wasp

Video Review
Video review HERE and embedded below:



Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Spectacular” Victory & Growing Split in Democratic Party

Atlantis: The Lost Empire

(Movie Reviews)

Why I Watched This Movie
So... like A Goofy Movie, this was another movie that I watched for the first time because I was using in my ESL class.
Over the past few years, I've been doing a lot of movie worksheets with my students.
Picking an appropriate movie is always difficult.
Anything too new or too popular, and they've already seen it.  But anything too old or too dated, and they get bored quickly.
I've had the same students for 3 years now, and I've worked through all of my good ideas.  Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, Ichabod and Mr Toad, The Secret of Nimh, The Emperor's New Groove, Winnie the Pooh, Princess Mononoke, Robin Hood, The Sword in the Stone, 101 Dalmatians, Ducktales, and A Goofy Movie.

I'm running out of ideas.  So for the next movie, I gave my students a choice of 5 movies to vote on, and I put Atlantis on the list.
I had never seen Atlantis before.  I know it had gotten mixed reviews, but at the same time I always thought it looked kind of cool.  So I decided to take a chance on it.  And the students voted for it.

The Review

Over-All
This was an experiment for Disney--an action/adventure animated film.  And experiments are always interesting, even if they don't work out.
I mean, they could've so easily gone with another princess story with cute animals.
This movie, in the end, doesn't work out.  But seeing Disney try to pull this off is so fascinating that, for all it's faults, I can't hate the movie entirely.

Part of the problem is the mix of genres.  This film can never really decide if it wants to be for 10-12 year old boys or for little kids.  And so it tries to do both--violent action scenes for the preteen crowd, but silly cartoon gags for the little kids.
The resulting confusion shows itself on screen.  It's clearly a movie that doesn't know what it wants to be.  But that's part of the fascination as well.

The action sequences are impressive for their animation quality.  The camera zooms around following flying ships and submarines through tunnels and caverns.  (Somebody obviously spent a lot of time working on the animation for this movie.  And I assume computers helped.)
But at the same time, the action sequences are a little bit too busy.  It's sometimes confusing telling what's going on with all the vehicles flying around, and the explosions.

I should note that this isn't actually Disney's first attempt to go after the 10 year old boy market--see also Treasure Planet, and The Black Cauldron.
But even compared with those other movies, Atlantis is by far the most violent.
There's actually a fairly high body count in this movie.  Most of the crew that starts out on the expedition dies along the way.
(Albeit we never see anyone we know die--all of the deaths are faceless extras.  And most of the deaths happen off-screen.  You see the explosion, but you don't see the dead bodies.  But still...)
And the ending sequence I'm fairly sure sets a record for "most machine guns fired in a Disney animated movie".
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well... who knows.  10 year old boys will love it.   (And the movie went over fairly well with all the 10 year old boys in my classroom).
As someone who was once a 10-year-old boy myself, part of me can't help but feel that this is exactly the type of movie I would have loved to see at 10 years old, and to view it fondly for that.
But the older part of me wonders if this might be another marker in our culture's "loss of innocence"--when even Disney movies become filled with machine guns and explosions.

I'll get around to nitpicking other aspects of it down below.

Atlantis
I've always been fascinated by the myth of Atlantis.  And if pop-culture is anything to go by, other people are as well.  (Back when I lived in the United States, I remember the History channel regularly used to run documentaries in which experts debated about the truth of Atlantis.)

Of course the basic concept is fascinating--an entire civilization lost to history.
But there's something even more fascinating about the antiquity and vagueness of the myth.
A lot of the ancient myths feel like they could have some historical value--that they could be mankind's earliest historical record.  The truth may have been distorted over the years, but there could just be a nugget of truth behind the mythology.  (Well, after all, Schliemann found Troy, didn't he?)

Maybe... just maybe... in the mists of antiquity, there was a real lost ancient island civilization out there.
(Yes, I know, most scholars think that Plato was just using Atlantis as an allegory, and that it doesn't come from an ancient oral tradition.  But it's fun to imagine anyway.)

This fascination with Atlantis is no doubt why so many movies and TV shows have attempted to depict Atlantis over the years.
But almost none of them have pulled it off.
The problem is that the myth of Atlantis is at its most fascinating when it's mysterious.
When filmmakers try to show Atlantis on the screen, what they project is never quite as interesting as the mystery of the original myth.

...so all that is to say, I think it was bound to disappoint no matter what depiction of Altantis Disney had decided to go for.  It was a no-win situation.
But that being said, they really blew it with this one.  An Atlantis populated by crystals, and strange alien technology, and giant robots, and forcefields, and flying vehicles.  Who wants to see that?

First of all, it takes away all the air of antiquity that lent the myth so much fascination in the first place.
But second of all, the whole thing makes no sense from top to bottom.
Where does this technology come from?  Why is it so advanced?
Why can no one in Atlantis read any longer?
Why are they submerged in the ocean?  What exactly happened?
What is going on with this crystal thing?
The movie doesn't even try to explain any of this.  In fact the movie itself knows it doesn't make sense.  It's own characters admit as much.

ROURKE:  Talk to me, Thatch. What's happening?
MILO:  Look, all it says here is that the crystal is alive somehow. It I don't know how to explain it. It's their deity. It's their power source.
ROURKE: Speak English, professor.
MILO: They're part of it. It's a part of them. I'm doing the best I can here. 

....and that's all the explanation the viewer gets.  Some strange thing about crystals, which nobody really understands even inside of the movie.

Now, this needn't be a huge problem.  (There are plenty of science fiction movies which don't entirely make sense).  Except that the movie spends so much time on it's own mythology.  If the mythos of Altantis had simply been in the background, I wouldn't complain about it so much.  But because the movie spends so much time on it, I wanted it to make sense.
There were so many long animated sequences in which the crystal transforms a character, or transforms the city.  These sequences can go on for 2 or 3 minutes without any dialogue, while mysterious music is playing in the background.
These sequences are really boring to watch, in large part because the whole world of Atlantis makes no sense.

Characters
I've read a lot of other reviews that complained about how boring all of the characters are in this movie.
I'm somewhat on the fence about this one.  Yes, most of the characters are under-developed.  Most of them just have a funny gag, and one line of backstory, and that's all the characterization they get.
But, on the other hand, it is a cartoon movie after all.  Most cartoon characters aren't really that deep.  If they have one funny gag, that's usually enough.

Part of the problem is that this movie is juggling too many characters, which means we spend too much time getting introduced to characters who are never developed.  (This is probably because Disney was originally planning on using this movie as a springboard for a TV show that never materialized (W). So presumably they were more concerned about future character potential than actually developing these characters in this movie.)

That being said, visually at least, these characters are broadly interesting as archetypes.  They at least remind you of a rich tradition of pulp fiction.  Rourke is perfect as the tough-guy adventurer.  Helga is great as the femme fatale.
Audrey and Sweet seem like characters who could be interesting if they were developed.
And Vinny is just there for comic relief, but to give credit, he is pretty funny.  (I love his deadpan delivery).

Rating
I debated between 3 and 4 stars.  It's 3 stars on the merits.  (There's a lot of flaws in it.)  But it's probably 4 stars on the watchability factor. (For all its faults, it's still pretty watchable).
And it went over well with my class of 10 year olds, so it's doing well with its target audience.
4 Stars it is.

Jules Verne
So, apparently this movie was inspired by the novels Jules Verne.
In my opinion, the influence is distant.  (It's a very loose inspiration).  But for what it's worth, here are my reviews of Jules Verne--Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days.

LINKS
SF Debris absolutely nails this movie.  He says everything there is to say about it.  Recommend watching his review instead of wasting time on mine.

A Look at the Background of Atlantis

Video Review
Video review HERE and embedded below:



Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky : Global Goals of USA

The Jungle Book (2016)

(Movie Review)

My History with this Story
So, like everyone else in the world, Disney was a big part of my childhood.
In my case, even more so than most of my schoolmates, because at our house we were not allowed to watch regular TV, and our media input was largely limited to PBS and the Disney Canon.
This past year, I got even more exposure to this movie, when I designed movie - worksheets based upon Disney's The Jungle Book and used them across 3 of my classes.  Between designing these worksheets, and playing them in 3 classes, I had the dialogue of The Jungle Book memorized backwards and forwards these past few months.  (I had no idea a new Jungle Book movie was about to hit the theaters when I did all this.)

...Oh, and also I read the original Rudyard Kipling book back when I was in 6th grade.  But the book has so little to do with the Disney movie that it's scarcely worth mentioning here.  (Walt Disney famously told his screenwriters not to read Rudyard Kipling's original book while they were making the movie.)  And I also saw the 1994 Jungle Book (W) and the 1942 (W) version.

Why I Saw this Movie / Thoughts Going into It
So I think we all had the same thought process regarding this movie, right?
Initially the reaction was, "WHAAAT?  A live-action remake of The Jungle Book that nobody asked for?  Curse you Disney Company!!!"

Followed by, "Oh, wait.  This thing is actually getting some pretty good reviews.  Maybe it's worth checking out after all."

Plus in my case the girlfriend wanted to see it, so it was inescapable for me.

The Negatives
* A problem this re-make inherits from its original source material: the story is largely episodic and lacks any kind of forward story-telling momentum.

* Related to the above point--is it just me, or was this movie a bit boring in parts?  I found myself really getting bored in the middle, and most of the rest of the people in my theater (including all the children) did as well.

* Another reason I think I got bored--because this was a remake, I knew exactly what the beats of the story would be, and there was no suspense.

* As amazing as the CGI was for all the background, it's just not quite there yet for many of the animals. Don't get me wrong, it's almost there.  In other 5 years we should be seeing some amazing stuff.  But....not quite yet.

The Positives
* Despite my complaining about the movie as a whole, there's no denying there were some pretty amazing scenes.  There was some real emotional intensity in some of the scenes (Shere Khan confronting the wolf pack, for example), and the beautifully rendered CGI jungle was great for a feeling of awe and mystique--like when Mowgli floated down the river into the fog, for example.

* Okay, so I've already complained about the CGI animals.  But the CGI everything else--the trees, the rivers, the rocks, the mud, the vines, the fire...that stuff was all amazingly real.  I would have had no idea it was all CGI if I hadn't read it on the Internet beforehand.  And even then, I was still having trouble believing it.

* Bill Murray

The Review
Hollywood loves remakes, but the biggest problem each remake faces is that it needs to justify its existence.  This movie did have some incredible scenes.  And some of these individual scenes were superior to their equivalent scenes in the original.  But I'm not sure the story as a whole was told any better here than it had been in 1967.

Bonus Section--Comparing the original to the remake

Bill Murray versus Phil Harris is a tough call.  I love Bill Murray. but Phil Harris's Baloo is just better.  Go watch the 1967 version again.  Phil Harris's Baloo is just bursting out with personality in a way that the 2016 Baloo never got to. (Admittedly that's partly because Phil Harris had more to work with in the 1967 version).

The scene in which Baloo has to tell Mowgli to go back to the man-village is also given much more motivation, and much more emotion, in the 1967 version.

I prefer Sebastian Cabot's version of Bagheera as well.  And I thought the interplay between Bagheera and Baloo was much better in the 1967 version.

(Although I did always feel cheated that Bagheera never faced off against Shere Khan in the 1967 version--I always thought it would be great to have a panther versus tiger fight. We finally did get this fight now in this 2016 version).

I absolute loved George Sanders as Shere Khan.  He was doing his classic George Sanders thing of the really posh upper-class English villain who was just oozing politeness and malice.

...But I have to admit that Idris Elba's Shere Khan is much more intimidating and frightening.

Also on the side of the 2016 version:
The 2016 version cuts out some of the dead scenes from the original (the elephant patrol, the second needless encounter with Kaa, the vultures).  And also cuts out some of the plot holes by coming up with a reason for Mowgli to be separated from Bagheera without Bagheera abandoning him twice (as in the 1967 version).
I also like that it gave Mowgli more of an agency by having Mowgli confront Shere Khan at the end, instead of just being hunted down by Shere Khan.

Other Observations
You know, I've always been skeptical of all those smug people on the Internet who said that "I Wanna be like You" was a racist song.  Okay, maybe with a little imagination, you could possibly read this as an allegory about race relations.  But you certainly don't have to.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a singing monkey just represents a singing monkey, and nothing more.
But whether the criticism is valid or not, it's widespread enough that it's become an embarrassment for Disney at this point.  I was under the impression that the song was embarrassing enough for Disney that they wouldn't include it in future versions.  I have to admit, I was a little shocked that they included it here.

Final Verdict :
4 Stars (Despite several of the positives mentioned above, I didn't think this film improved enough on the original story to justify it's existence, and I found the middle pretty boring.)

Link of the Day
The GOP and the Christian Right

Zootopia

(Movie Review)

Why I Saw This Movie
If left to my own devices, I probably wouldn't have seen this.  But the girlfriend wanted to watch it, so I agreed to go along.
(Apparently this is one of the few movies which is getting an international release ahead of the US release.  So it's in theaters in Vietnam already.)

Negatives
* As you would expect from a children's movie, the humor is not subtle at all.  The jokes are a bit too obvious, and the characters stand around and mug with cute faces to emphasize all the jokes.  (To be fair, this is only a problem for me as an adult--it probably works perfectly fine for the movie's target audience).

* The soundtrack: bland generic pop songs.  (Again, to be fair, it probably went over fine with it's target audience.)

* Boy, does this movie ever hit you over the head with its main themes! Those first 10 minutes especially you really really got hit over the head with the "believe in yourself and follow your dreams" set up.  Which of course, made the pay-off at the end of the movie incredibly easy to predict.

* If you're going to make an allegory about peoples of different races and cultures living together in a multi-cultural city, than using different animals to represent different races is the obvious choice.  I mean, the story and situations just write themselves, don't they?
The problem with this analogy, however, is it has a limit.  There's no biological difference between the different human races, but there are significant biological differences between a rabbit and a fox.  It's wrong to assert that there are biological differences between black and white people, but you would not be wrong to say that a rabbit and a fox have a different biology and that this biology makes them behave in different ways.
I would have been content to overlook the biological science issue if the movie hadn't called attention to it, but the movie went deliberately out of its way to have a scene in which a fox was offended because a rabbit said that predators and prey have a different biology.
The analogy was presumably meant to imply that it's wrong to talk about different human races in this way, but I wonder if the movie didn't shoot itself in the foot by shining such a spotlight on the biological issue.

Positives
* Although I said above that the humor was too obvious and too cutesy, this applies mainly to just the verbal humor.  The visual humor I quite liked actually.  The animators were able to get a lot of mileage from imagining all the ridiculous situations that would result from animals of all shapes and sizes living together in a city--little mice driving little cars underfoot, for example--which I quite liked.

*Also, the other exception was Jason Bateman.  I thought his character worked quite well, and Jason Bateman's deadpan comic delivery was spot on.  Also, the animators did an excellent job of creating a cartoon fox which looks exactly like Jason Bateman.

* You know, 20 years ago I would have thought that a movie editorializing against racism was out of date.  The civil rights movement had been a success, overt racism was on its way out, and it was time to focus on the more subtle forms of discrimination.
...But with the rise of xenophobia in the US, I'm not so sure anymore.  Maybe we do need movies with messages like this.  It's not subtle, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.
Also, to the extent that all Hollywood blockbuster movies are now international releases, I think that there are many areas of the world where this message still needs to be heard.  For example, Cambodians feel no shame in vocally expressing how much they hate the Vietnamese people living in Cambodia.  In Vietnam, the Vietnamese hate the Chinese.  In Thailand, the Thais hate the Cambodian migrant workers.
So I'm happy knowing that this movie is now playing in theaters in places like Cambodia.  Hopefully it might even alter attitudes over there.

The Review
This movie will play absolutely fine with its target audience.  (My 6 year old students absolutely loved it).  Adults can expect the message to be too obvious, the jokes to be too telegraphed, and the pop songs to be predictably top-40 bland.
But, the visuals are funny, and Jason Bateman's character is good.  Altogether, not a bad waste of time.

Rating :
4 out of 10.  (Although admittedly, it should play fine with its target audience).

Other Notes
* The scene with the Sloths working at the DMV got huge laughs in the theater I was in here in Vietnam--I'm assuming because the Vietnamese government bureaucracy is just a nightmare to deal  with over here, so the joke easily crossed cultural boundaries.

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky - The Herd of Independent Minds

Zootopia: Movie Review

Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier

(Movie Review)

Negatives
* Action sequences are getting pretty far-fetched.

* Related to the above point: I know Captain America has a super serum which gives him super-strength, but even given that super-power, his body should not be surviving all these high speed crashes and falls.

* So many unbelievable coincidences are used to keep the plot of this movie going.

* Related to the above point: so many plot holes

* Lots of bad movie cliches: from "bad guy tells them all about his evil plan for no reason" to "they never kill the hero when they have a chance"

Positives
* As much as I was rolling my eyes at how much physics and human biology was getting disregarded in these action sequences, I've got to admit they were pretty high adrenaline, cool and cinematically well directed.

The Review
This is a popcorn movie. If you can turn your brain off and enjoy all the explosions and people flying through the air and just watch it for the spectacle that it is, you'll enjoy yourself fine.  If you try to make sense out of any of this mess of a plot, your brain will explode.
The movie starts out with what looks like it might be a promising plot, but it quickly degenerates into just another super-hero action-fest.  On the plus side though, the action sequences are exciting, even if they are pretty ridiculously unreal.

Other Things I was Talking About If I Wasn't Limiting Myself to 100 Words
* Wow, the body count in this flick is really high--Remember when we were kids, and there was that unwritten rule that superheros were never supposed to actually kill anyone, unless you were specifically going for a darker edgier superhero movie?

Rating :
4 out of 10 stars.  (Really really dumb, but action sequences are at least delivering the adrenaline thrills.)

Links
For my take on other movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe see Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Captain America, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, The Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy.

External Links
So, as I'm watching this, I'm thinking: "Oh man, Cinema Sins is going to have an absolute field day with all the plot holes, unrealistic action sequences, coincidences and cliches in this movie."  And then I googled them, and sure enough, they do not disappoint.  They find enough material here to make a 22 minute video detailing everything that was wrong with this movie.
I love Cinema Sins.  It makes it a lot easier to just link to them then to attempt to detail all of this stuff myself.


But that being said...I think there's even more ridiculous stuff in the movie then they caught.  I caught a few more things watching this movie that they don't even mention.

Honest Trailers was somewhat more complimentary--and I agree with them, the action sequences in this movie are pretty cool (provided you can turn off that nagging little voice in the back of your head that keeps telling you how unrealistic they are.)  But I agree with their nitpicks more than I agree with their praise, and they do get around to nitpicking this movie as well.


Link of the Day
Grammar, Mind and Body A Personal View

Birdman

(Movie Review)

The Review
A hard movie to write a quick review of, since this movie is working on multiple levels, and I'm not sure I'm even getting all of them.  I will say I found it entertaining, funny, and intriguing.  Despite the fact that some of the themes of the movie got a little bit repetitive.  And I had the feeling that, at times, the movie thought it was cleverer than it actually was.

Links
This AVclub review here is what made me want to see this film in the first place, and remains a much more intelligent review of the film than I would ever be able to give.

Rating :
4 out of 10 (tentatively--although this is a film that's hard to get a good rating on.)

Link of the Day
MIT Professor Noam Chomsky Dispels 9/11 Conspiracies

The People Speak

(Movie Review)

Negatives

* This isn’t really a movie so much as an audio book someone inexplicably decided to film.

* The cavalcade of celebrities is impressive, but also distracts from the message of the speeches they are reading.

* Many of these celebrities are blatantly trying to show off their acting chops, but some of these pieces might have benefited from a more subtle interpretation.

* Most of the celebrities didn’t bother to memorize their speeches, and so were constantly looking down at their lines in a manner I found distracting.

* I accept the necessity of having to dramatize any speeches made before the age of audio recording, but it is unnecessary to re-record speeches of already gifted orators like Malcolm X.

* Amerocentric—the film ignores the international aspect of many of these movements, such as the 8 hour working day, or woman’s suffrage.

Positives

* I learned a lot.

* The selected readings were very well chosen, and very powerful.

* Despite the fact that this should be really boring, it’s actually not half that bad.

* Well-paced.

The Review

          In spite of all its flaws, a very powerful and moving film. And very informative.  But I probably would have gotten just as much out of it if it had been an audiobook  instead of a movie.

Rating:

4 out of 10 stars (The message of the film gets a 10 in my book, but the rating is based purely on watchability, and not on the message of the film.)

Link of the Day

Noam Chomsky: Apathy and Anarchy 2/9/93

And on a completely different note... From cracked.com 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly)
In a previous post, I wrote that I couldn't get into The Walking Dead because I just couldn't suspend disbelief about the zombie apocalypse, and this  article sums up my views nicely.  Whenever I watch The Walking Dead, I just can never quite figure out where all the zombies are coming from and why they always manage to overrun everything.

The People Speak: Movie Review