Movie Catch-Up: The Way Way Back, Walter Mitty, Carrie, and The Lone Ranger

The Way Way Back is Way Way Cool

Films about estranged, misunderstood teens featuring rather shy and introverted, eccentric kids struggling with finding their way in a rather cold, cruel world, such as with last year’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, remind me so strongly of my own quirky youth.  I see myself quite clearly within some of these socially awkward geeks on the fringes of their worlds, with their sometimes darker but heartfelt emotions showing through and a bit of superior intellect that only helps to further separate them from normalcy.  I’m right there with them!  I often felt like I was at the bottom of a swimming pool in my own out-of-my-depth existence.

This film, like Perks, features a young man of such caliber, 14-year-old Duncan, played with just the right amount of disaffection by Liam James, forced to tag along with his emotionally venerable mom Pam (Toni Collette), her rather smarmy, demeaning (and cheating) new boyfriend Trent (Steve Carell) – two great performances here, by the way - and Trent’s hideously self-absorbed, bratty little princess Steph (Zoe Levin) on their summer vacation.  Stumbling into a job at the local water park, which is its own magnet for quirky misfits, Duncan makes a connection with the unreserved Owen (Sam Rockwell) and starts to come out of his shell, making a stand, for both himself and his somewhat fragile mother.  He also develops a crush on a sweet local girl Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb) that makes his vacation the most memorable time of his young life.  The film is filled with great moments, characters, and dialogue, both downhearted and jovial, like the best of dramas.  It was a surprising delight to watch! 

It's No "Secret" I Liked the Life of Walter Mitty

I wasn’t expecting much from this film.  Usually, if they remake an old “classic” almost no one these days has ever heard of, it’s ravaged by the critics as unnecessary, even if we happened to like it.  The film that comes the closest, in my mind, is Mr. Deeds from 2002 starring Adam Sandler and Winona Ryder, which was based on the 1936 original, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur.  Critics ravaged it, yet I found it to be one of Sandler’s better movies.

            

This film follows suit.  I can’t speak to the original from 1947, starring Danny Kaye, because I’ve never seen it, but going in, I knew basically three things:  It was a remake of an old comedy, the plot concerned a quirky loser with an over-active imagination going on an adventure that apparently put his fantasies to shame, and that it stared Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, and Sean Penn in a cameo as a hotshot, globe-trotting photographer whom Mitty must find.  Like Sandler, I sometimes like Stiller, if the role and movie are just right (including Mystery Men), but I often find him over-exaggerated and grating. 

            

Not this time.  This time, the plot of the movie is so well written, it fits Stiller’s character to a T, and winds up being a real and inspirational crowd pleaser, as inventive as what is usually running through its main character’s head.  The dull and directionless Mitty, with the crazily vivid thought-life, not only went on the adventure of a lifetime, trying to track down a missing negative that was to become the cover shot for the last physical issue of Life Magazine, but, in the midst of losing everything, including his job, and having no purpose, he finds not just his reason for being, but finds out he had that purpose all along.  It's a brilliant twist at the end, I thought, once that final, elusive missing negative is found.  Another delight!

Didn't "Care" for the Remake of Carrie 

I’ve been wanting to see this remake of Carrie since it came out in October.  I even rated all the Stephen King theatrical movies around Halloween when it was released (linked here)

            

I think I got it out of my system.

“Chloe Grace Moretz!” I thought to myself.  “She was the one who played that little vampire girl in Let Me In!"  And despite the violence, that Kick-Ass movie was at least inventive, and once again, as Hit Girl, she was more than a match for anyone she was up against, no matter how big.  "She’s playing Carrie in this remake!" I thought, "and Julianne Moore is playing Margaret White.  And those previews, with all the updated CGI effects!  It should be sooooo good!”

            

I was soooo wrong.  Director Kimberly Pierce’s first mistake was doing the same thing Gus Van Zant did with the remake of Psycho.  Though they didn’t make a shot for shot remake, they still obviously used the same script as the first one, changing only just a few plot points here or there.  It made a person who might be familiar with the first one aware of the lesser acting, not only from the leads, but everyone from Judy Greer as the gym teacher to Portia Doubleday as Chris Hargensen.  A few people came out relatively unscathed here, from an acting standpoint, most notably Ansel Elgort as Tommy Ross, and Moretz and Moore don’t do too bad with their roles if you don’t compare them too closely to Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie in the original movie.  Still, it’s disheartening going in, expecting something a bit fresher, and finding almost the exact same dialogue from the original movie, like the scene where the gym teacher punishes the girls and Chris refuses to take it, or when Carrie is about to go to the prom and her mother says of her dress, “Red… I might have known it would be red…” and “I can see you’re dirty pillows…” and “They’re all gonna laugh at you.”  They also copied the tone, from the comedic prom preparation of Tommy and his buddies to the prom scene itself, with Carrie backlit when the stage catches fire, and Carrie’s fatal knife fight with her mother at the end.  Yet everything in the original was better, even those crazy, inexplicable candles all over Carrie’s house when she got home.  The only thing different here, besides the workmanlike direction of Pierce (of Boys Don’t Cry and Stop-Loss), are the CGI effects, which actually take the place of Brian DePalma’s expert direction, Mario Tosi’s superb camera work, and Paul Hirsh’s inspired editing from the original.  The 1976 film is a classic supernatural thriller in the great Hitchcock tradition.  The prom scene is almost a case study in how to make a classic Hitchcockian thriller, with Sue following the line of a rope with her eyes, up to the rafters, attached to a bucket right above Carrie's head, and then looks for the other end, finding it underneath the stage, held by Chris.  It was scenes like this that turned into a fondly remembered, bonafide classic horror film from the 70’s.  Even with the CGI effects, and Moretz doing her crazy best as the freak, dripping with blood, unleashing her awesome telekinetic power, it still just feels like such a cheap knock-off. 

            

And what about those effects?  DePalma had wanted to do Carrie’s rampage on the town from the novel, but didn’t have the money for it, so he settled for a quick shot of Carrie rolling and blowing up Chris and Billy’s car.  Here, she stomps her foot and makes the road nearly swallow it, then holds it in midair as Chris’s face pushes slowly through the cracked windshield.  It’s okay, but overall, still can’t compare with the original.

            

And the fact of the matter is, this special effects update has been done once before, with the two night TV miniseries from 2002 starring Angela Bettis and Patricia Clarkson as Carrie and her mother.  That one wasn’t as good as the DePalma classic either, but at least it used a different script, one much closer to the novel.  Despite finding Moretz and Moore doing an okay job in the acting department here, if you’re looking for a better remake of the novel with an original script and updated effects, I suggest you check out the TV miniseries.

The Lone Ranger Really IS Lone: Nobody Went To See Him in Theaters

Wow!  Cut it some slack, guys!

It’s already gone down in history as one of the biggest box office flops of recent years, right next to R.I.P.D., also from this year.  But don’t let that stop you from enjoying a mindless and fun action comedy starring Armie Hammer as the masked cowboy of legend, and Johnny Depp as his (somewhat) faithful sidekick Tonto.  I found this to be in the same vein as the Antonio Bandaras Zorro movies and the Brendan Fraser Mummy flicks.  I’ve certainly seen worse of this type.  The Will Smith Wild Wild West comes most readily to mind.  This one had about as much action and comedy as the Zorro and Mummy movies, so I don’t understand why it was such a flop, unless cynical critical and audience reaction merely kept more audiences away in droves.  Sure, it’s not Shakespeare, but then, neither are any Hollywood action comedies.  Just what was it about this one that made it so much worse than all the others that it deserved such a moniker as “one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history”?  Beats me?  Maybe they did overspend, but so did the makers of Hudson Hawk, and this thing is light years beyond that one! 

            

There, see.  And I barely even mentioned Johnny Depp’s very weird turn here as Tonto.  That’s because, if Johnny Depp is in it, playing anything even slightly unconventional, you can best believe it’s going to be a very weird turn.  But like all his other bizarre characters – and there have been many – I enjoyed Tonto too.

Gun-Free Zones Are Slaughterhouses

Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Ft. Hood, the Amish School Shooting, the Aurora Theater Shooting; Kurt Vonnegut's classic and satirical WWII novel Slaughterhouse Five seems to be increasing in number, as we encounter more and more stories about madmen taking guns into gun-free zones and unleashing a reign of bullets.  Slaughterhouse Five is becoming Slaughterhouse Six, or Seven, or Eight, as the occasions and numbers continue to stack up.

But that's not the case everywhere.  Take the recent Arapaho school shooting.  Student Claire Davis clung to life for a few days in the hospital before expiring, yet as tragic as that is, what is even more tragic is how liberal Democrats and leftist progressives are using this tragedy, and others like it, to push through more gun laws.  Hmm.  Don't we already have restrictive gun laws?  Why didn't they prevent the shooter, Carl Pierson, from entering that school?  

I have several thoughts about this whole thing.  First, are more gun laws really the answer, considering that the shooter Carl Pierson broke the gun laws that already exist to carry his guns and Molotov cocktails into the school?  These shooters plan, it seems to me, on emulating Klebold and Harris of Columbine High School infamy in gun-free zones with bunches of innocent, defenseless victims.  Thanks liberals!  But you might want to ask yourself one question:  Although it’s still tragic that Claire Davis lost her life, if Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Ft. Hood, the Amish school shooting, and the Aurora theater shooting had so many victims, how come there was only one this time?  You won’t find the answer in the official reports on most news channels, newspapers, or on the main websites for news organizations, which mostly all state that the shooter made his way to the library and took his own life with his gun, prompting nearby guards to the library.  I had to find and corroborate the real story, which the Washington Post confirms, that the shooter committed suicide only after an armed deputy cornered him in the library.  If you’re wondering why the regular news media isn’t reporting that, ask yourself if they support more gun laws or not.  If word leaked out to their regular viewers that this guy was stopped by another guy with a gun, well, that doesn’t sit well with their usual politics.

           

Another interesting piece of news from this story is how the gunman – or “gunchild” actually - was supposedly liberal, just like the psycho in the Aurora theater shooting, and how the parents of the victim forgave Pierson for killing their beautiful daughter, saying he didn’t know what he was doing, and asking for donations in Claire’s name for mental health and anti-bullying programs.  Because, in a way, these “monsters” are victims too.  Here’s yet another case of a killer and his victim forever linked because of his horrible crime, yet one has to wonder, as the victim’s parents have indicated, if the killer is really just another victim.  It shows how tragedy can come from anywhere, and now two families and a community are suffering because, once again, nobody saw the warning signs, or acted on them.  

It’s just so sad all over again.

Celebrity Creeps and Their Wonderful Movies: The Case of Woody Allen

“If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one.”

“Do not judge, lest you be judged.”

“I did not have sex with that girl.”

People, including liberals, love their sound bites.  I liked the way Ann Coulter put it when she said liberals claimed that their arguments were too sophisticated to fit on a bumper sticker.  She pointed out that “I ♥ Partial-Birth Abortions” fits just fine.

Politics is sticky business.  I was recently taken to task on my blog for judging celebrities, in this case Miley Cyrus for her now infamous twerking episode at the VMA awards last year.  This person applauded Miley for her “confidence”, saying that I should see that in her too and applaud her for it, and in the same breath, this anonymous person demonized Robin Thicke for his misogynistic song “Blurred Lines” that he sang next to a twerking Miley, writing about how the women in the video were nude and how he was objectifying them.  This person sat in judgment of me because I was sitting in judgment of Miley Cyrus and because I wasn’t, apparently, sitting in judgment of Robin Thicke (though I did judge him, and the lyrics to his song, and his R-rated video, in another blog post, and on Facebook).  I guess you just can’t win.  Some people will hate you no matter what you are, or what you do.  Take any kind of a stand, for anything, and people will hate you for it.  Don’t take a stand, and some people will hate you for that too!  Miley has a right to be an idiot, but that also means I have a right to think she’s an idiot for making the immoral choices she is making.  And maybe someday, when she looks back at her earlier choices, she'll think she was an idiot too.  But if you make any kind of a judgment call, people will judge you, even if their favorite bible quote happens to be “Do not judge”, which they pull out whenever you judge them or others, but which they happily forget when it’s time for them to dole out the judgment against judgmental Christians or misogynistic pop stars, while sticking up for the twerking idiot next to him.  Round and round and round it goes!

In light of all of this, what am I to make of the accusations of pedophilia against famed director Woody Allen by Mia Farrow’s now grown daughter Dylan?  She claims Woody molested her when she was seven, and, in an open letter to the New York Times, indicted Cate Blanchette and Alec Baldwin for working with him on his latest Oscar nominated film, Blue Jasmine.  Does she have the right to speak out against Woody?  If he really did what she claims he did, absolutely!  Indicting the actors who work in his films?  Um, not so much.  I can certainly understand her frustration, particularly with someone like Diane Keaton, who knew her when she was a little girl, and knows their family history.  But, as much as I’m not in love with Hollywood’s love affair with the left and all their liberal causes, you can’t fault an industry for applauding Woody for his work, or these actors for being in his movies – especially since most of them are so far left anyway.  If they had Christian morality, it might be a different story. 

If I was in her shoes and he had done that to me, and gotten away with it, I’d be so upset and angry, especially if he was enjoying career accolades and making good films.  Personally, I myself can name at least three Woody Allen films I really loved - Bullets of Broadway, Cassandra’s Dream, and Midnight in Paris – and a number of others I liked, such as Radio Days, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and going way back, Take the Money and Run. 

In truth, the fact that some of his movies are so darned good probably just makes the whole ordeal that much worse.  We might have to ask if his talent and career accolades might not be giving him a bit of carte blanche to get away with being a law-breaking, disgusting creep, and then lying about it.  If his movies stunk, might he already be in jail for fondling his stepdaughter so long ago? 

            
Of course, there are a few of his films I didn’t care for, and his famed and cherished Annie Hall is right there in the middle of all the Woody Allen films I didn’t like for their stream-of-conscience meanderings and pseudo-philosophical, bohemian pontificating.  It leaves me wondering, in light of these accusations from Dylan Farrow, should I feel guilty for liking Bullets Over Broadway and Midnight in Paris so much?  The answer, I think, is no.  The last time I checked, a movie is made by a lot of different people, helmed by a director, but it is not that director, or that actor, or that scriptwriter.  It is a combination of a lot of different minds, craftspeople, and artists, but first and foremost, it is there to simply tell a story, and hopefully tell it well, and, of course, turn a profit.  That’s show business, which is a show, and a business.  And if I was going to feel guilty over liking a movie based on the morality of some of the people involved in the making of the movie, I’d have to feel guilty for liking any movie I’ve ever seen.

            
Woody Allen should be behind bars if he did what Dylan Farrow claims he did, but it has apparently gone through the courts years ago, without enough evidence to convict.  Do I personally think he did it?  I don’t know, but I find it a distinct possibility.  We tend to put celebrities on a pedestal, but by the simple law of averages, some of them have got to be creeps.  Do I think Michael Jackson was a pedophile, and do I think he molested choreographer Wade Robson when he just a kid?  Yes, it’s very, very likely.  Does this make me second guess whether or not I should buy his music?  Absolutely.  You have to draw the line somewhere.  Whereas Woody Allen’s movies are so much more than just “directed by Woody Allen”, a musician’s music is a tad more individual.  If Woody Allen was a singer and produced a CD (now there’s a thought!), I wouldn’t buy it.  I did, however, buy the soundtrack to Midnight in Paris because I liked all the music from that movie.  Why should a person deprive him or herself of the pleasures of Sidney Bechet’s trombone or Stephane Wrembel’s excellent guitar just because the guy who directed the movie their music is in might be a disgusting creep?  Again, if that’s the case, I might as well throw away every secular movie, CD, and book I own, and maybe even some Christian product, and live in a bubble. 

Besides, there is a lot more going on in the world than just whether or not this or that celebrity is a creepy creep, or a tragic statistic, be it Dennis Rodman wooing North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and starting to sound like Ozzy Osborne on a bad day, or the horrid tragedy of famed and talented actor Philip Seymour Hoffman dying with a heroin needle sticking out of his arm.  There are certainly lessons to be learned here, I think, but as much as I might personally like dwelling on them sometimes, especially since I am such a film freak and TV watcher, I realize there is much more going on out in the world than celebrities and the movies, TV shows, books, and music they like to make, and that I sometimes like to enjoy and dissect.

And in my next blog post, I'll talk about just a few of them.