Dan Mooney

I haven’t seen Invictus yet, but still, District 9 is the best movie set in South Africa I’ve seen in a long time.

In short, District 9 is Avatar plus The Hurt Locker, divided by 2, plus 28 Days Later. But for all that went into it, and came out of it, I liked District 9 more than all of them. It does a better job of storytelling than Avatar, casts a wider net than The Hurt Locker (or seems to), and has a similar excitement to, but is deeper and more touching than, 28 Days Later.

In the movie, Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is an excitable corporate worker and government operative selected to spearhead the eviction and relocation of an alien population from District 9 in Johannesburg to internment camps outside the city. In Copley, I see a lot of Craig Ferguson, and a little Christian Bale – he’s a wide-eyed, orderly guy who opens the movie with enthusiasm. His cheerfulness fades, but not his optimism. He’s shown to be quite capable, resilient and realistic when the severity of his predicament sets in.

There’s a lot to like in this movie. For one, I enjoy how the aliens are introduced, without fanfare, really – more like they’re just humans of another race (rather than emphasizing the fact that they’re extra-terrestrial ooooh). That sets a good tone for the parallels exist between the movie and South Africa in the era of apartheid. Comparisons aren’t heavy-handed, or preachy, or overwhelming. Often in movies of this type, the aliens revolt and get real angry and find national landmarks to blow up, but in this movie they’re oppressed, shown rather sparingly, and when they are, it’s generally as decent beings as defensive as any other race on earth.

District 9 reminds me of The Hurt Locker in some of the visuals, the mise en scene of battle. The device of the news/documentary for purposes of exposition is done with a light touch – the people speak more from the heart, are more willing to speculate rather than just being talking heads explaining what’s been going on. The hints of foreshadowing add some flavor, too.

Can’t forget to note the appearance of the mech suit, seen recently in Avatar. I’m now convinced that whenever this shows up, there’s commentary having to deal with the fragility of the human body, of an increasing reliance on technology, and on a slightly different tack, of the “ghost in the machine,” sort of; how the human spirit is, for better or worse, tethered to a corporeal form. The symbolism isn’t as clear or obvious as in the fight scenes of Avatar, but I think it’s worth mentioning as a go-to device in sci-fi movies.

Maybe it’s silly of me to compare genres here: it’s tough to argue that District 9, say, should have won the Oscar over The Hurt Locker, for several reasons I won’t get into in this very last paragraph. But it further surpasses other “alien movies” than The Hurt Locker does other “war movies.” I will say that. It’s excellent, nonetheless.

4 stars

I saw The Hurt Locker a while back, before the Oscars, but didn’t take the time to sit down and write about it. There’s no accounting for that, really. I’m satisfied enough with the idea that the time from finishing this review to publishing it will be hundreds of times faster than the time from viewing to writing. Ah, the Internet, what an amazing thing: in a little while, something I haven’t yet written will be accessible from nearly any corner of the globe. I don’t see how a globe can have corners, but that’s beyond the scope of this entry right now.

In this film we follow William James, a bomb defuser, for a month in Iraq. We see what he does, how he acts, in a small way what makes him tick and why he keeps doing what he does. I applaud the movie mostly for keeping my interest: How do you make a film exciting when it’s certain your main character – who deactivates bombs – will not be blown up straightaway while deactivating a bomb? You do it with good filmmaking, which in this case supersedes reason and expectation and keeps people like me watching throughout. Good enough for me.

Some might criticize the pacing of the movie – maybe less easily done when the screenplay wins an Oscar, but not nearly impossible – but I enjoyed the different backdrops for the action. A mid-desert stakeout seems to play out for much longer than the chapter’s running time, but that plays off well against the tense scenes in which there are bombs that may blow up and kill people.

And, to continue with that example, moments like that, the quieter moments (though never entirely quiet, or boring) let us know about William James in ways a bomb suit doesn’t fully address. We see how he looks after his brothers in arms: he prepares a juice-box for one, he cleans bullets for another. These are not the actions of a one-dimensional adrenaline junky. They’re more like those of a big brother, or babysitter, or even parent. When a guy defusing explosives can mute his ego enough to show this camaraderie, we see more of why William James returns so often to this lifestyle. It’s a shared experience, one more visceral and exciting and more important to him than what he might find spending time with his wife and infant child. It’s remarkable for me to see this character with some understanding and even sympathy despite his veritable dismissal of his family. The merit of his choice is arguable, but that the reasoning behind his chronic decision is so compelling speaks to part of why the film has gotten the praise and awards that it has.

In the weeks before the Academy Awards, there was some criticism of the screenplay for its inaccuracies, and apparently there weren’t just a few of them. There’s talk it was to create backlash/uproar before the Awards, I don’t know, but even if the criticism were true, I’m not even sure it’d matters. The movie’s not a documentary, it’s a movie. This is what fiction is, lies telling a truth. The awards were not in the details. And while I didn’t think it was the Best Picture of the year, I’m not too upset about that. It was in the conversation.

3.5 stars

Up is a movie far stranger, and far more moving, than the one I was expecting. I thought I’d signed up for what really could have been the 20-minute short film version of the same movie, stripped of the extra layer or two of complication. And that would have been effective, and I would have enjoyed it, dewy-eyed and with a newfound appreciation of life and old people and aging, and that would have been it.

See, in this movie, balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner) is a widower, refusing to move from the house of his dreams despite the large-scale construction surrounding him. It’s the house where, as a boy, he bonded with a little girl named Ellie, and later where they spent their married lives. When Ellie dies, he becomes more protective of his property, and when it’s encroached upon, he fights back and, one thing leading to another, is eventually forced to leave. But not without his house! He lets fly the balloons and sails to his and Ellie’s dream location in South America.

It goes on from there, in a couple of directions – but if it didn’t, that’d be the short film I described earlier. Right near the beginning, a beautiful, extended wordless montage takes us through his and Ellie’s lives. It sets the stage wonderfully, yet I’d have been satisfied with that dense little love story as is.

That’s the heart of the movie, Carl’s relationship with Ellie. From the extended first passage to other moments threaded through, it’s only superseded (in time, if not in significance) by his grandfatherly rapport with young Russell, a “Wilderness Explorer” (Boy Scout) and stowaway on the house-in-flight. They each make an animal friend in South America, Russell with Kevin (a rare local bird) and Carl with Doug (a dog owned by a SPOILER). Not entirely unlike the Wizard of Oz, Carl-as-Dorothy takes his flying house and proceeds en route with these three pilgrims. But in a twist on that story, the Wizard is off to see them, and that’s where the movie takes its dark, weird turn.

Turns are fine when they don’t make me ask questions that aren’t otherwise addressed or answered in the film itself. Turns out there were a lot of these, questions or things that otherwise stretched my disbelief too far (way beyond moving a house via balloons). And it left an unwelcome taste, though one that didn’t detract from other character arcs in the movie.

How dare this movie make me feel! I was looking for a breezy, optimistic puff-pastry but ended up with, not to continue the metaphor, an arguably well-balanced movie that evens out the sentimentality of the main plot with a weighty, adventurous side that doesn’t let the entire feature-length ordeal get carried away with itself (sigh).

It’s tough, but I can’t not compare this to Wall-E, Pixar’s previous release. I preferred Wall-E because the story seemed more coherent, the protagonist more charming, the antagonist less random, the world more interesting and engrossing. Up is gorgeously rendered, of course – that almost goes without saying, and is no small feat, and like Avatar, goes so far in earning the whole production its rightful praise. The focus on the older gentleman reminds me of Geri’s Game, the Pixar short film from 1997 in which an old man plays chess with… himself (and whose doppleganger – or something – shows up in Toy Story 2 as a toy repairman). And whatever makes that short film’s depiction of an elderly man so appealing, interesting and compelling, works here also. The drawbacks I see are narrative-related. Up is a very, very good movie, and one I recommend, and one I wish I could have enjoyed more than I did.

3.5 stars

It must have been Netflix that suggested this movie for me – could have been my appreciation of No Country For Old Men that did it. However it happened, I was glad to have seen Shotgun Stories, and I’ll tell you about it.

The movie is set in Arkansas, and starts and proceeds with the relaxed pace of the lives of its main characters. We first meet three brothers, grown men, called Son, Kid and Boy. (Son is nicely played by Michael Shannon, who not only looks like a young, angry David Letterman, but was also Fred – the newlywed destined for Wrestlemania – in Groundhog Day). Their father passes away and it’s at his funeral that we meet another set of brothers – ones called by typical first names – who are the father’s children by his second wife. The father became successful only after abandoning his first family. The argument over how to remember the man heightens this ongoing conflict between the families, and sets the rest of the movie on its course.

The comparison to No Country for Old Men is apt, if a little too generous. There’s an impressive efficiency in the dialogue, for example, that’s refreshing in any script but in this case also underlines the nature of these characters and of their feud. No more is said than is necessary to tell their story, but we also see that the resentment has fed on this silence. We get to see it addressed, finally. The movie’s not scary, but its suspense is built in a similar slow, methodical way. Often there’s a disarming quietness in the air. The direction is straightforward, not too flashy, and that could merely be a by-product of its budget – but I also see the insistence and modesty appropriate and effective for the tone and the characters involved.

It’s when the violence escalates that what just might be the symbolic component in it all really made itself known. To me, broadly, this story cuts right to the heart of religious conflict. The comparison works best without being too specific about the players involved, I’ll admit, but: here we have two sets of children from the same father. They dispute the right way to think of him, wanting to have the only word in shaping others’ perspectives of him. One set of children has been raised to hate the other set, before being old enough to decide for themselves. These men are called to the front line of a fight that wasn’t entirely theirs to begin with, but has ultimately become theirs to deal with. And unfortunately, both sides look to violence before first considering that this conflict may be sooner resolved through cooperation and discussion. But even that solution isn’t easily achieved if it’s in these boys’ nature to be more reticent than talkative. The violence picks up quickly, building on the emotions of many years, and soon these newest generations are fighting to exact revenge for even newer transgressions farther removed from the original disagreement. And buried beneath all of this is hopeful idea that it might just take one person with an idea of peace to open the eyes of those too eager to continue fighting.

3 stars

I walked out of the theatre with my friend, long faces, blank looks, scratching our heads. The man who ripped our tickets saw us headed out and asked, “You just saw A Serious Man, didn’t you?”

Yes, we had.

I didn’t know what the hell to make of what I’d just seen. I thought I’d enjoyed it, more than I didn’t. I know I laughed a bunch of times. But I wasn’t sure that I’d enjoyed it, and I wasn’t sure how to judge the movie. I do know I thought and talked about it a lot that night, and the next day. Something must have worked. I also know that the movie’s main character suffers one disappointment after another, of varying levels of severity, again and again until the movie ends. Watching it was pretty pitiful, and it took reflection to understand what else might have been going on.

I first began to wrap my head around this movie when I thought of it as the Coen Brothers’ “Woody Allen movie.” Maybe a blunt comparison, but a helpful one for me. Broadly, the protoganist is familiar: Jewish, professional, bespectacled, and frustrated that despite his intelligence, he can’t figure life out better than he does. The major difference is that the Woody Allen persona approaches life’s absurdities, or defends himself from them, with humor – and that Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is, well, a serious man.

The short preamble (that paves the way for the Tarantinoesque opening credits) offers a morality tale and a quote, both suggesting to approach life simply, to accept things as they are, and that there’s a benefit to this practicality. That view is held by Professor Gopnik, given his restrained reactions to the many major life-altering situations he’s presented with. In the end these stresses do add up, to exactly how much is only implied. He’s affected, but he’s not. He’s stoic and accepting of his fate. Enter my own frustration: Is this a sign of weakness, or of strength? Is he a doormat, or just forthright? Is he to be respected or ridiculed? We see that he’s probably happiest in his dream sequences, when he succumbs to the temptation to do and think things that either his morality or his manners won’t normally let him. It’s easy to see him as passive and ineffectual, and therefore unsympathetic, and painful to watch. That was my first take. But it’s then beneficial to consider the alternative, to admire his persistence, and to focus instead not on the quickness or severity of his reactions, but on his methodology.

And his methodology is: taking the long view, operating at a cool remove, and asking men of authority – and some women – for their advice. Rabbis (each older and wiser than the previous), lawyers, his boss at work, these are some of the people who can help Larry Gopnik when he’s not in a position to help himself. He’s at their mercy, and there’s a measure of strength in that vulnerability and openness. So despite his reluctance to, say, fight back mercilessly at those who threaten him, his curiosity and his faith redeem him to a certain extent. If I didn’t consider these traits, I’d have easily dismissed the guy, and thought much less of his story. But certain things came into focus for me, after the fact, and I was satisfied enough, as Larry seems to be, to puzzle them over without necessarily figuring them out.

3 stars