Review: Spiderman 3 ****

As super hero films go, this is a movie that has it all: great special effects, exciting action sequences, and, most importantly, good acting and a good message. Most importantly, Spiderman 3 has the best moral message in a long time. Remember earlier this year when the new Superman movie came out and we learned that the Man of Steel had a child out of wedlock? The rest of the movie was good, but we had certain reservations about the plot. Not so here, as Spiderman's actions and words teach overtly the lesson that we always have a choice about our actions and our choices shape our character.
A certain tar-like substance can grow to cover people with a black elastic material that molds into Spiderman's suit after it gets on him accidentally. Spiderman/Peter Parker, discovers that when he wears the black suit he is cocky, short with people, and vengeful, but he enjoys being that way. This movie is a Jekyll and Hyde story with all of the necessary ingredients: the good character finds a way to bring out his bad side, he likes the bad side, and the bad version of him starts to take over. The black material affects Spiderman and his rival reporter, who becomes a spiderman with a mouthful of teeth similar to that of the shrieking eels from "Princess Bride." The toothy spiderman, Sandman, and Harry, Peter Parker's friend played by James Franco, all make choices and have to live with them. The climactic fight and its aftermath illustrate perfectly the principle that you reap what you sow and each person must take responsibility for his own actions. You can always choose to do the right thing.
With this performance, Tobey Maguire shows that he is an excellent actor. He manages to pull off the nerdy and cocky versions of Peter Parker, the good and bad sides of Spiderman, and does so with a million subtle expressions and gestures that are extremely fun to watch. Happily for all of us, Kirsten Dunst has matured noticeably since the last movie, so that her performance here lives up to her character's potential. A good script and an excellent supporting cast complete this movie's impressive resume. Highest recommendations.

Review: Music and Lyrics ****

"Music and Lyrics" is the best romantic comedy I have seen this decade, bar none, and it is not a close call. The satire on the American music industry is sharp and extremely funny - lampooning both '80s music videos and today's Britney Spears-type starlets. This movie is filled to brimming with material that is funny because it is true. The opening scene alone is worth the cost of admission, showing a music video of the band, "Pop!" in their biggest hit from the '80s. Their hairstyles, gestures, costumes and staging all motivate the viewer to scream, "I can't believe that was cool twenty years ago!!" We learn that Colin, one of the lead singers of "Pop!" became a star after the band broke up and the other faded into obscurity to become the answer to a trivia question. The has-been, Alex Fletcher, (Hugh Grant) is in the process in the present day of trying to make a living by singing at retro-type venues that still want to see him perform. He is in trouble, however, because there are so many "new old bands" that are competing with him. (That bit about "new old bands" was my favorite line in a script full of witty and memorable observations.) Alex receives an offer from Cora, the current Britney Spears-type star who has a decent singing voice, but gyrates incessantly in skimpy costumes and calls it dancing. She has a title for her next song that she needs him to write, which project she has also given to a number of other composers and lyricists. The one who writes the best duet will record and perform it with Cora, likely launching a big hit. He also has only three days or so to write it.
Drew Barrymore is the girl who waters Alex's plants, but she gives a number of rhyming lines off-the-cuff, so he excuses his current rather eccentric partner and takes her on as his lyricist. Naturally, a romance blossoms between them and they discover certain things about one another as romance blooms. The performances are good on all counts, and Hugh Grant gives his best performance in a long time. Twelve years ago, critics and fans observed in view of his performance in "Sense and Sensibility" that "humility becomes him." Indeed it does, as he plays a very believable has-been whose pretentious stage antics leave him with the occasional pulled muscle. Drew Barrymore is anything but a good actress, but this is one time in which the part conforms to her strengths so that she does not do any damage. A number of memorable supporting performances make this a memorable movie.
In terms of content, Cora's satire on Britney et. al. is realistic and her costumes highly immodest, so you might be careful of boys watching this movie. Also, the two stars naturally become lovers before he has put a ring on her finger. In sum, "Music and Lyrics" is an excellent piece of satire, you will enjoy it, and I will purchase it as soon as it is available.

Movie Review: Flags of Our Fathers ***

"Maybe there are no such things as heroes..." the character James Bradley muses in the concluding scene of "Flags of Our Fathers," which sums up the movie's message perfectly. The movie is based on the best-selling book by James Bradley, son of one of the men in the most famous photograph in American history. After his father's death in 1994, he researched the lives of all six men in the picture, three of whom the Japanese killed on Iwo Jima in subsequent fighting. The format of the movie version follows the book relatively closely, involving flashbacks and cuts between the soldiers' training, the Battle for Iwo Jima, and the war bonds tour on which the War Department sent the three survivors as spokesmen.
The movie gets 3 stars because the battle scenes are outstanding. The way the Marines move onto Iwo Jima, they look much like the real footage of that battle that I have seen. Clearly, the director of this film, Clint Eastwood, paid very close attention to showing the scenes as they really looked. Even little things - Ira Hayes hanging his poncho off the back of his belt and Hank Hansen's baseball cap - get the correct portrayal. At the outset, the Japanese did not contest the beach, instead shooting from hidden bunkers after a large body of Marines had landed. The viewer never sees the Japanese soldiers unless they are driven into the open, creating the perfect mystique of the unseen enemy. The capture and gruesome butchery of Bradley's best friend receives very sanitized treatment. They could not have shown Iggy's corpse and maintained an R rating - he was mutilated beyond recognition - but Bradley's character might have described the scene, as is recorded in the book. He does not because this movie is not about Japanese brutality - it is about American lies about heroism - and the crew never loses sight of this point.
The segments portraying the bond tour reveal an ax to grind on the part of the creators about the improper exploitation of heroic images. They show mostly accurate events, but they insert a few episodes that are not in the book and change events from the way they really happened. When one survivor initially mis-identified one man in the picture, they hosted one bond tour event with the wrong gold star mother. That Marine, Hank Hansen, had entrusted his personal effects to John Bradley as he died and Bradley took advantage of Mrs. Hansen's presence at the event to give her Hank's personal effects. In the movie, Bradley has no relationship with Hank and does not give his effects to his mother, but only lies to her about Hank being in the picture. The speech that they give on the bond tour bears no resemblance to the speech that James Bradley records in the book. The real John Bradley told the people attending the events that he and his comrades had done their part by serving on the battlefield and the home front needed to do its job to bring the war to a conclusion. In the movie, he gives a modest message about the real heroes being the ones who died and he entreats the people to buy bonds in their honor. Bonds are hereby turned into memorials to the dead, rather than tools for the troops to finish the job. When a screenwriter has a speech word-for-word and uses none of it, I have to wonder why. Obviously, we all know today that nothing happens in war except people dying, so there is no appropriate use for war bonds except memorials. The war bond drive succeeded, but the movie does not mention this because it is not a movie about success.
The screenwriter, Paul Haggis, also wrote "Million Dollar Baby" and "Crash," which teach that there is no reason bad things happen and that people are racist. I think most of us regard our history of racial strife as bad enough without adding instances of racism that did not happen. Unfortunately, Haggis had only one racial minority, Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian, with which to work. His comrades deride him as a "redskin" and call his girlfriend a "squaw," neither of which appears in the book. How likely is it that a bar in Chicago in 1945 would have a policy of not serving Indians? That scene is simply absurd. Ira Hayes had a drinking problem, but why turn him into Rosa Parks fighting a Jim Crow system that did not exist? It is the little modifications inserted into an otherwise accurate portrayal that give this film a deceptive air. The real John Bradley was a devout Catholic, but the movie character neither crosses himself, nor says a Hail Mary nor carries a rosary because Paul Haggis' movies do not have devout characters. 99% of the viewers will never know that John Bradley received the Navy Cross, the second-highest medal that any sailor can earn for valor. His son pulls a medal out of an envelope, but never tells us what it is because this is a movie about made-up heroism, not real heroism. I would say, "Our heroes are more human than we make them out to be and we should remember their human sides." This movie teaches "there are no heroes," but only invented scenes that people create as heroic so that we can understand wars. I don't recommend this movie and I will not see it again.

Pelosi Targets Intelligence Funding

If you have been wondering why the Left has been so obsessed lately over global warming, we officially got our answer today. Speaker Pelosi is pushing legislation that will require intelligence agencies to monitor the climate. Make no mistake: the Democrats have been stirring up this global warming hysteria because they are against the war in Iraq. Republicans have a message, mentioned by Rudy Guiliani last week, that amounts to, "we face a deadly threat, in Islamo-fascist terrorism, and only our party is addressing it." Understanding that they lose credibility with voters when they act as though that there is no terrorism threat, the Democrats had to come up with a life-threatening situation that only their party could handle. Enter global warming, the love affair with "An Inconvenient Truth" etc. Note that Gore's book Earth in the Balance did not win a Pulitzer Prize or anything of that sort. The Democrats did not feel that they needed Gore then, but now they do, hence two Oscars for his movie.
Today, they declare that global warming is a bigger threat to the world than all of the weapons in the world, including nuclear weapons, so they can return some of the salvos that the Republicans sent over, accusing them of dereliction of duty. Now, Pelosi takes the next logical step in the process of replacing the War on Terror with the War on CO2 by attempting to siphon off funds from intelligence organizations to monitor global climate conditions. She even insults our intelligence by saying that these appropriations will not divert any funds from the intelligence work necessary to fight terrorists. The 2008 campaign will be a clear choice, as we have the war of the wars: fight Islamo-fascist terrorism or fight carbon emissions. Abstain from over-reacting on global warming or abstain from fighting terrorists. Every time our policemen unmask another plot, as they did in New Jersey today, Republicans are proven right again.

The Trouble with Saturday Night Live

Some of you may have tuned in to NBC on Sunday night at 9:00, as did I, to catch highlights of "Saturday Night Live in the 90s." I tuned in to see the classic "Motivational Speaker" sketch with Chris Farley and David Spade, Tim Meadows as the Ladies' Man, Norm MacDonald and Will Ferrell as Burt Reynolds and Alex in Celebrity Jeopardy, Cheri Oteri as Barbara Walters, Molly Shannon, aka Superstar, Ana Gasteyer and Shannon in the NPR takeoffs, not to mention Darrell Hammond's outstanding impersonations of Bill Clinton and Dana Carvey's George H. W. Bush. That's what I tuned in to see, but it is not what I saw.
Instead, they interviewed the stars, writers, producers, and executives about the various classic scenes, gave a very thorough backstory on the inner workings of the show, and threw out occasional clips of the sketches that lasted no longer than 30 seconds. Who in the NBC hierarchy thinks that we want to hear about the intricacies and reasons behind Norm MacDonald getting fired? We want to see his sketches! I don't care if Chris Rock and Adam Sandler look back on their time of sharing an office as the absolute dream accomodation for comedians. I want to see funny scenes. My idea of a highlights show is one or a few hosts - no more than three at a time, but they can rotate - giving a brief backstory and introducing the greatest moments from "Saturday Night Live" in the 90s, and counting down the 25 greatest sketches. Then, having announced the sketch, they get out of the way and let us watch it. There is nothing worse than seeing only 10 seconds of Alec Baldwin advertising his Schwetty meat balls on the NPR lampoon, a 5-second dose of Barbara Walters, Matt Foley doing 15 seconds of his commentary on "living in a van down by the river," etc.
They did the same thing on a "Saturday Night Live" highlights show a few years back, so now I am officially finished watching these sorts of shows. If the producers don't even know why people watch the show, as evidently they do not, it augurs poorly for the future. A show so narcissistic that the makers think we would rather hear them talk about the great moments than see them has a dim future.

Bush Vetoes Pull-Out Pork Bill

President Bush found his veto pen for only the second time and used it to strike down a bill that would set a date certain for pulling our troops out of Iraq. In so doing (sarcastic tone starts here) he ended the long tradition of American Commanders in Chief of setting dates for ending military action. We all remember General Washington and President Hancock agreeing that the colonies would fight against the British until July 4, 1782, whether or not the British had left the continent, because six years was long enough to fight that war. Who can forget General Grant and President Lincoln deciding that April 12, 1865, would be the last day that U.S. troops would be on Southern soil? It is a good thing that in each case our troops won the war before these dates, isn't it?!! Obviously, no successful war in history has included this sort of pre-emptive surrender.
The bill, as you probably know, was an emergency funding bill for the troops in Iraq that the Democrats in the House of Representatives saddled with extra pork spending and a time table for withdrawal from Iraq. It passed very narrowly (without the vote of my Representative, who is a Democrat) and stands no chance of surviving this veto. The radical base is placated now, so every Democrat must wonder, "What will they ask me to do next?"
Lieutenant Colonel (R) Buzz Patterson has coined the term Dhimmicrats for our friends on the Left who oppose the current campaign against Jihadists. Dhimmis are people of minority religions who live in Muslim countries under second-class citizenship status, paying the Jizya tax on non-Muslims. That may be the most useful descriptive term to come down the pike in a long time. They are on the road to dhimmitude, but hopefully the adults can keep them from taking this country with them.

Movie Review: The Pursuit of Happyness ***

This movie is a study in pain. Never have I felt so much pity for a lead character, nor felt so provoked to pity. Pity for the protagonist in this film is like an enticement, but instead of a siren in revealing garb, we see this man beset by adversity at every moment from every direction for two hours. In "The Pursuit of Happyness," Will Smith plays a salesman in 1981 San Francisco whom the viewer learns in time is actually an ambitious entrepreneur who thought (mistakenly) that he could make a fortune selling bone density scanners. Finding that job a dead-end prospect, he encounters a stockbroker with a sports car and decides to pursue the wealth that he imagines stockbrokers accumulate. This movie might better be called "The Pursuit of Wealth" because our hero, Chris Gardner (Smith) pursues his dream of riches to the neglect of everything else.
The way to become a stockbroker, Gardner learns, is by completing a six-month internship with Dean Witter. The internship is unsalaried and his family is already months behind in rent. His wife leaves him because she cannot take the strain of their lack of income, so he takes custody of their son. They remain behind in rent until the landlord evicts them, hesitantly, and they go to a motel. Again, the lack of payment of rent prompts the landlord to evict them and they sleep in a homeless shelter, if they are there on time to get in line. I like the portrayal of the landlords in each case: they are decent, humane, and reluctant to evict, far from the Shylock image that we often see. The night that father and son spend in a bathroom at a subway station because there was no room at the shelter is the most difficult scene to watch. Every husband or father who considers his role to be that of provider for his household will feel intense sympathy for the characters at that time. Will Smith's real-life son, Jaden, plays his son, whose part is particularly well-written. He makes the observations that kids will make, speaks the unguarded truths that children will come out with at inconvenient times, and seems not to notice the total destitution of their situation. He goes where his father tells him to go, has a bed to sleep in, and does not seem to perceive the want that they experience.
As Chris Gardner describes his life, narrating part of the film intermittently, the viewer marvels at how he coudl keep up such a hectic pace for six months. Gardner spends much of the movie running to pick up his son from daycare, to catch a bus, to get to a job interview, or to catch a homeless person in the process of stealing one of his scanners. After this display, I speculate Will Smith's next movie might be "The Jim Brown Story." Most of "The Pursuit of Happyness" describes Gardner's life as an intern in the rat race of trying to get clients for Dean Witter. There are twenty interns out of whom one will get hired at the end of six months. The brokers in charge of the interns send them on errands, including menial jobs - it is reminiscent of "Devil Wears Prada," except the stakes are ten times higher. In this case, the intern is in a position of complete desperation and has a son to support. One scene grew so desperate that I turned away from the screen - I had hit the wall, and could not take the pain of this movie anymore. At the end, Gardner gets the job and walks off into the sunset with his son, so that the viewers can breathe again. "This is what I call happiness," he tells us. Captions tell us that he made millions of dollars as a stockbroker, but nothing else. Did he reconcile with his wife? Did he marry again, or pay his landlords for the rent he owed them? What did his son (who is now thirty) end up doing as a profession? A final few minutes showing him buying a house and tucking his son into his own bed would have been nice, but family stuff is not what this movie is about. "The Pursuit of Happyness" is about getting rich, and nothing else. You might want to see it once to experience a rush of sympathy, but I might advise you to spare yourself the pain and simply be thankful that you have a roof over your head and your necessities are taken care of.