The Grinner and the Grouch

Remember all those old movie comedies in which the quirky female eccentric ends up winning over the grumpy old guy? This isn't one of those movies.

For one thing, the male protagonist in the 2008 movie Happy-Go-Lucky is not necessarily old but rather young. For another, he is not exactly won over by the quirky female protagonist but instead develops an odd fixation that is better seen than described. And for another...

Well, let's just say that anyone who rents Happy-Go-Lucky expecting a simple little comedy is bound to be disappointed. In fact, it is a wonder the producers of this movie were not sued for violating truth-in-advertising laws.

Yet despite a misleading title, Happy-Go-Lucky is more worth seeing than many recent comedies I can mention. Just don't rent it expecting a lot of laughs. Not everything worth watching in life is necessarily funny.

Disappearing Act

It's funny how movies which imagine an USA without Mexicans never seem to imagine an USA suddenly devoid of Mexican lawyers or doctors or cops or nurses or even computer operators. Nor do they rarely portray an USA devoid of Mexican military men -- which is quite odd, considering the number of Americans of Mexican descent in the U.S. Armed Forces. Instead, it is always Mexican menial workers such as maids, janitors, gardeners and fruit pickers who seem to be the main ones affected by such a situation. At least, that is how it seems in the 2004 movie A Day Without a Mexican.

In a way, I get the movie's point. If we were to deport all the Mexicans who were in the USA illegally, it would create a big hole in our society. And though the movie does tend to overdo it with the melodrama, the movie's subplot involving the one Mexican who didn't mysteriously vanish proved to be quite effective in spite of itself.

Yet as much as I enjoyed the movie's humor, I couldn't help but find the movie's humor all too convenient. After all, all too many non-Mexican people in the USA already have trouble thinking of Mexican-Americans as anything other than illegal aliens. Why encourage them? And don't Mexican-Americans who aren't illegal aliens have stories worth telling too? If so, why do we always pretend that the only Mexican-Americans worth telling stories about are the ones here illegally?

I Don't Know How to Say This

I actually celebrated Mother's Day this past weekend by accompanying my mother and my youngest brother to a local fish restaurant, after which we went to a local theatre to see the new release Soul Surfer. And even though Soul Surfer was billed as a “Christian” movie made primarily for the appreciation of “Christian” movie-goers and even though I have a tendency to cringe whenever the makers of a certain form of entertainment go out of their way to emphasize that it's a “Christian” movie or a “Christian” TV show or a “Christian” record and not just a form of entertainment which has Christians in it -- I actually ended up liking the movie.

That's right. Despite all its religious messages and Biblical allusions and mentions of a certain Christian savior, I actually liked Soul Surfer. And this despite the fact that I am a mere heathen Catholic who is supposedly too hip to like “Christian” movies.

Perhaps it was because of the acting chops of Helen Hunt and Dennis Quaid, who play the parents of the title character, a young girl who was maimed by a shark and then forced to learn how to relive almost half her life with only one arm. Or perhaps it was because I could not help identifying with the title character. Or perhaps I relished the irony of a movie which saw no reason why surfer culture and traditional Christian culture should not be part of the same lifestyle, which was not the type of thing one would have expected from conservative Christians four or five decades ago.

No matter. The movie was enjoyable in its own way and while I would not necessarily go out of my way to see it again, I can hardly pretend that it was one of the worst cinematic experiences I have had this year.

It would be nice to blame the success of the movie on the number of scenes involving bikini-clad teenagers but I've seen Hollywood movies that have bared far more skin and still managed to be boring. Indeed, one of the most surprising things about this movie is that it appeared to have more in common with traditional Hollywood sports movies like Ice Castles and Gracie than it did with the average religious movie. And it did not hurt that many of the values it promoted (perseverance, fair play, willingness to help others) seemed suspiciously like the ideas liberal movies used to promote.

I really do not see this movie converting many viewers who were not already Christian to begin with. But I liked it anyway.

And I like to think that the fact that I was able to walk outside afterwards and not worry about getting hit by a lightning bolt says something good. If not, I am sure I will soon find out.

Machete Don't Vex

Every time I've been ready to give up on filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, he managed to come up with a film that was way better than I could have hoped for and last year's Machete was no exception. It is not every one's taza of tea, of course. Indeed, Rodriguez appeared to have gone out of his way in the trailers to tick off a particular type of anti-Hispanic chauvinist who has become quite common on the Internet. Yet the film never came across as the type of boring propaganda piece that appealed only to die-hard political southpaws. Granted, it is not likely to have strong appeal to the type of people who like to congratulate themselves on their dislike of Hispanic illegal aliens but then there are already enough films out there that pander to such folks.

Anyway, Machete had enough humor in it that it could just as easily be seen as a parody of Mexican exploitation films as it could be seen as an example of such. It did not hurt that it starred Rodriguez movie veteran Danny Trejo in the title role. Though Trejo was getting a bit old to play a convincing romantic lead, he was still able to play a convincing action hero, in this case the title character Machete (so-called because his favorite weapon of choice was, of course, a machete). Along for the ride were Michelle Rodriguez as a mysterious taco truck owner, Jessica Alba as a Hispanic border patrol agent and Cheech Marin as a priest. (Yes, you read that last part right.) Opposing Machete were a host of Hispanic and Anglo villains including a Mexican druglord played by Steven Seagal and a Bush-like politico played by Robert De Niro.

Oddly enough, the queasiest part of the movie came not from the shameless ethnic jingoism about which many right-wing critics of this movie had warned. After all, Machete killed almost as many Latino villains as he did Anglo villains and much of the film's most obviously political scenes -- for example, the "big" immigration rally in which Alba's character declared her conversion to Machete's cause -- were played for laughs as often as they were played straight. No, the most worrisome part of the film was the amount of surprisingly graphic violence which bordered -- no pun intended -- on splatterpunk territory. I am not so naive as to pretend that graphic violence is unusual in a mainstream action thriller but it has been a very long time since I have seen disembowelment and finger severing treated so casually in such a movie. It was almost as if Rodriguez was not so much interested in competing with Sergio Leone as he was in competing with Clive Barker.

Quibbles about violence aside, Machete still managed to be more entertaining than I expected. And I suspect a Machete II might be lurking somewhere down the road if Rodriguez has his way. If not, it should be.

If Brevity Is the Soul of Wit...

Some short stories aren't meant to be made into full-length movies. It doesn't matter how many really serious subplots you add; they don't really work unless they're short subjects.

Richard Matheson's “Button, Button” is one of those short stories. The original short story worked best as a brief entry in the John Collier “Gotcha” School of Storytelling. The premise was simple: a stranger presented a married couple with a mysterious box one day. They were both told that they have only to push a button on the box and they would get a huge cash reward but in return, someone they didn't know would die. The couple debates the morality of this offer until one half finally gives in and pushes the button. Afterwards...

Well, actually the original short story didn't talk much about what happened afterwards. It just presented the reader with a quick “betcha didn't see that coming” ending and then faded out. And no doubt that's how it should have ended. Any longer than that and the story just gets too pretentious. Moreover, it loses any real suspense since the longer you draw out the answer to key questions, the less the average person actually cares about the resolution of said questions.

Any argument to the contrary can be disproved by the 2009 movie The Box, which is based on the same Matheson short story. On one hand, the movie deserves props for being more philosophically ambitious than what usually passes for science fiction nowadays. After all, it just doesn't want to be yet another cheap thriller about mysterious men in black who want to manipulate us into doing God knows what; it wants to be the ultimate version of such a thriller. And it doesn't hurt that the movie never really answers the obvious question concerning who created the box. Was it God? The Devil? Aliens? The movie never really says and yet it gives us a lot of evidence to support each theory.

And yet because the movie draws out its storyline so much, it ultimately seems less than satisfactory. It doesn't want to upset the women in its audience by implying that they're all sociopathic button-pushers and yet its attempt to imply a similar thing about men doesn't quite work either. Instead of coming away with some big lesson about the nature of human morality, we're instead left with a story which pretty much implies that both sexes would push the button under the right circumstances and that there's no point in expecting better of mankind because we're all a bunch of selfish losers anyway.

Granted, it's hard to watch the evening news at times and still convincingly argue against such a worldview. Then again The Box is hardly the first movie to present such a pessimistic view of mankind and it doesn't even present it in a particularly original way. Which makes me wonder if the real test lies in how we respond to this movie. Do we say, “Yeah, those mysterious box-makers got us pegged, all right. So why bother?” Or do we prove them wrong? Personally, I'm siding with the “prove them wrong” faction but then that's just me. And it's not like I have a box.

Babes and Bathwater

I'm usually a big sucker for movies in the “lovable loser” comedy genre but here's the thing: the losers in said movie have to be actually likable, if not lovable. They cannot be jerks, blowhards or generally unlikable people. They have to be the type of people you would root for in real life, not the type that would make you cringe if you found yourself sitting next to them at a party.

Granted, the bar for the lovable loser genre has gotten low over the last few decades and heaven knows there has been way too many movies in which the one likable thing about the comic protagonist is his affection for his grandma. But last year's Hot Tub Time Machine is so pathetic it does not even bother to include the grandma. Instead we get one suicidal loser who has done his best to alienate almost everyone in his life except two friends -- and his two friends, who are not all that much better. Along for the ride is one friend's fatherless nephew, who seems to be the one person in the group with a sense of humor and a genuinely likable personality. So naturally it is a running gag of the movie that he ends up getting dumped on through most of the movie by the suicidal loser.

Then the group gets the opportunity to go back in time to the 1980s via the time travel device mentioned in the movie title and alter history for their young selves. But unfortunately, they prove just as obnoxious in their 80s incarnations as they were in the present, and they not only almost blow their chance to change anything but prove themselves even less worthy of success than they were in the present.

It would be nice to pretend that this movie was funny despite all this but it was not. Most of the pop culture jokes concerning the 1980s were just old hippie jokes from the 1960s retooled for a different decade and to add insult to injury, almost every female character that the group encountered in the 1980s -- including a group member's sister! -- was depicted as being little more than a brainless bimbo. (Because apparently no other kind of female existed back in the 1980s as far as HTTM's writers were concerned.)

As a result, the film's happy ending made me feel as if I had just found out that the worst bully I knew from high school had won the lottery. Because, in effect, that was what happened. The most unlikable character in the movie stayed behind in the past to change things -- and ended up altering history in favor of himself and his chums. Which would not have been so bad if this was supposed to be a dark comedy, but it was not.

Oh, well. Perhaps it is just as well that the movie did not include a grandmother. After all, it is hard to imagine HTTM's writers being all that more respectful toward senior citizens.

Two Characters in Search of an Éxito

Ay, Dios! And I thought Spanglish had a condescending view of Hispanics. At least it attempted to have some sort of story and some type of characters. Writer/director Brad Silberling's 2006 “comedy” Ten Items or Less could not be bothered to attempt that much. Instead we get some type of experimental movie comedy whose “comic” high point had otherwise likable actor Morgan Freeman following around an elderly Mexican store clerk and imitating him in an allegedly humorous manner. And this, mind you, was supposed to be part of the funny part of the movie.

At the beginning of the film, Freeman played a character which was supposed to be a thinly disguised version of his real self and Jonah Hill played a character who could not help calling attention to the fact that we were watching a movie. Hill dropped Freeman off at a Mexican supermarket in order to let him allegedly research an upcoming movie role whereupon he promptly ran into Scarlett Morales, a Spanish store clerk played by Paz Vega. Freeman ended up hooking up with Morales for reasons that never really made sense and following her to a job interview. Along the way, they had more than few philosophical discussions but for the most part, the two characters seemed to exist merely to allow Silberling to poke fun at the banality of their surroundings, ridicule which might have been more sympathetic if Silberling had had anything particularly interesting or imaginative to say with these characters but he did not.

Instead we get a series of condescending looks at various locations in blue-collar LA followed by a lot of really patronizing dialogue. Both Morgan and the scriptwriter evidently wanted to give us the impression that there was something particularly amazing about Ms. Morales that made it worthwhile to sit through the entire movie but they never quite managed to put this across in a convincing manner -- and as a result, the movie seemed even more patronizing toward her and the other Hispanic characters than a more conventional movie would have been.

I suppose Morales’ story arc was supposed to be an allegory for every poor sap who had to spend countless hours at thankless jobs until he or she finally made it big in Hollywood but unfortunately we never get to know enough about Ms. Morales to care that much whether she succeeds or fails. And it does not help that the other people in such environments receive even less attention than Ms. Morales. If just once the script had showed sympathy for such people, I might have taken the movie more seriously. But instead I found myself acutely missing the days when Hollywood still made movies like Bachelor Mother and The Shop Around the Corner -- movies that perhaps were not the most politically correct but at least took their characters seriously enough to give them decent storylines and dialogue. Instead, Ten Items or Less treated these items as if they were kitsch best reserved for the type of people who usually go for black velvet Elvis paintings and portraits of card-playing dogs.

Oh, well. If nothing else, this movie taught me that putting more dark-skinned actors and actresses in front of the camera is not necessarily going to make for better movies if they receive no backup from the folks behind the camera. Nor was thinking outside the box necessarily going to lead to making better movies if you did not come up with better ideas. But then all this should have been obvious before I saw this movie. And it is not necessarily just me who needs to learn these lessons.

The Last Great Christmas Movie?

I'm trying to think of a great Christmas movie that has been made since Love Actually was released in 2003 but not a whole lot of movies come to mind. Nothing Like the Holidays was okay but it was hardly as memorable an effort as this film was. And the less said about such dubious efforts as Elf and Deck the Halls, the better.

Besides, Love Actually is more artistically ambitious than most feel-good holiday movies and though not every subplot works as well as it should, the film itself ends on a more satisfying note than most conventional movies. Not everyone in the movie gets a particularly happy ending and some people don't even get a particularly realistic ending. But the whole thing still works despite itself and this is despite my usually being a diehard Anglophobe who delights in poking fun at imperfect British movies.

Besides, I don't really feel up to griping about Elf this week even though it's about as shameless a waste of cinematic talent as I've seen in ages. Even Zooey Deschanel couldn't save it for me and I usually love everything Ms. Deschanel does.

In Vino Mentiras


You know the best way to appreciate the 2001 flick Crazy/Beautiful?

Don't know any alcoholics.

For that matter, you'd probably be better able to appreciate it if you don't know anyone who is related to an alcoholic.

For some reason, real-life experiences tend to take all the fun out of this movie. After all, once you've spent hours listening to a female friend talk about how her mother was always passed out when said friend was growing up, this movie's constant pleas for sympathy on behalf of the alcoholic female lead (played by Kirsten Dunst) just don't seem that entertaining.

It's not that Ms. Dunst isn't cute or that her boyfriend (played by Jay Hernandez) isn't sympathetic.

But it's hard to praise a movie, no matter how well-made, whose conclusion contradicts the lessons of real life. I don't expect every movie to be super-realistic and I realize that escapism is often the chief appeal of most movies. But some forms of escapism are more acceptable than others and when said escapism implies that one can get an alcoholic to reform by simply loving them enough, it's hard not to find said escapism to be an obscenity.

After all, the world is full of people who would like to see their alcoholic kin reformed and to imply that these people rarely get their wishes because they lack affection for the kin in question is just shameless. I like to think there's a special place in Hell reserved for the type of people who would promote such a belief. The screenwriter and director of this movie should pray they don't end up there.

To Boldly Go Where We Have Been Before

I liked Star Trek: The Original Series well enough when I was in my teens and I liked the Star Trek movies very much when I was in my twenties. But I never loved the series the way others seemed to love the series and I never got the appeal of watching certain episodes over and over again even though I had a number of favorite episodes I did not mind seeing more than once.

When the new Star Trek movie by Alias creator J.J. Abrams came out last summer, I found myself somewhat surprised by my indifference toward the new movie. Even my mother -- who was never much of a science fiction fan, much less a Star Trek aficionada -- was more interested in the new movie and while I will not pretend that watching the new movie was the equivalent of pulling out my fingernails, I cannot really pretend that it revived my interest in the series. At best it was a watchable -- but not particularly memorable -- movie which was good for an occasional Saturday night rental -- but not much else.

Why should this matter?

Because last year's Star Trek movie made enough money to already provoke rumors of a sequel. And while I must admit that I would rather see yet another Star Trek movie than another Hot Tub Time Machine or 40 Year Virgin, I cannot help but wonder about the projects that we will never see because of Hollywood's insistence that successful sci-fi = Star Trek. Or Star Wars. Or X-Files. Or any idea that has already been done before.

For example, what would be wrong with a new sci-fi movie that is not part of the Star Trek universe? (Or for that matter, the Star Wars universe, the X-Files universe, etc.)

Why not adapt a novel from author Philip Jose Farmer's classic Riverworld series? Or Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land? Or Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light? Or better yet, some original sci-fi idea.

As much as I liked Star Trek, there is something about the endless chain of sequels, spin-offs and remakes of that series that turns me off. After all, the main appeal of science fiction has always been that of an universe where anything can happen. So why do so many fans of that genre seem to prefer going to the same old places over and over again? I will admit that Star Trek was one of the better sci-fi series to air on TV and I will even admit that Star Trek the movie was one of the better movies to come out last year.

But it was not that good.

And even if it were, is not it time to try something new? Or should we choose to boldly go where everyone and his cousin has already gone before?

These Losers Aren't Really Losers -- Except at the Box Office


At last I find a sequel-friendly action movie that actually deserves a sequel. So naturally it bombs out at the box office.

No wonder it is so depressing to be a movie critic nowadays.

The funny thing is I did not really expect to like The Losers that much. After all, I started burning out on action movies some time in the late 1990s. I remember sitting through the beginning of John Woo's Face/Off and thinking that the last thing I ever wanted to see was yet another movie in which some dude holds a gun in each hand and fires them both at the same time as if that had never been done before. And that despite the fact that Face/Off was a good movie compared to much of its competition.

And yet this movie won me over. Jeffrey Dean Morgan lived up to the promise he showed in Watchmen and the other guys were great too. Even the villain (played by Jason Patric) was memorable -- though the film's attempt to make a serious political comment by giving the guy an American flag lapel seems more laughable than effective. (Hey, it is not like we have not seen evil C.I.A men in the movies before.)

The one sore spot in the movie was the casting of Zoe Saldana as the mysterious woman who intervenes to help the group of ex-military men known as the “Losers” after a mission in South America literally blows up in their face. I usually do not have a problem with Ms. Saldana and I remember liking her well enough in Avatar -- a movie that other people either liked or hated a lot more than me -- but there seemed to be something off about her in this movie. On one hand, she speaks her lines well enough. On the other, she seems awfully thin for a femme fatale superspy -- even taking account of the fact that she originally meets up with the group by posing as a South American b-girl -- a profession not known for its aristocratic physiques. Indeed, she even seems thinner than Rosario Dawson was when she starred in Rent, the Chris Columbus movie musical in which Ms. Dawson played an AIDS-stricken stripper -- though I am hoping for Ms. Saldana's sake that that is just due to a lapse of memory on my part.

Oh, well. The movie ends on an emotionally satisfying note and yet leaves enough loose ends for at least one more sequel. But as I noted above, the film did not do so well at the box office so I guess we will never see that sequel. Instead we will be seeing even more attempts to ape Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Twilight and other proven successes. What a pity.

The Moore, the Not So Merrier


An American Carol seemed silly enough back when it came out in 2008. It seems even sillier now in 2010, at a time when most Americans are likely to be far more worried about either getting a job or keeping a job than what some semi-famous documentary filmmaker says about America. Since the film aspires to be a comedy, one would think that this silliness would be a good thing. But unfortunately, for a comedy to provoke laughs, such silliness has to be earned. No one minds laughing at a comedian who gets off a great joke or gets away with an especially daring pratfall. But the comedian who does not seem to care that much whether or not his jokes are funny or his sight gags are humorous is a comedian few people are going to laugh at. Unfortunately, An American Carol seems to have been written by just such a comedian.

Here's the thing: An American Carol was specifically created to poke fun at Michael Moore. I am not a big fan of Michael Moore. I used to be a fan after reading his book Downsize This and for many years after that, I thought it was neat that such a smart writer hailed from my home state of Michigan. But after seeing how blatantly he lied in his “documentary” Bowling for Columbine and how rarely he was called on his lies by political southpaws, I lost faith in the guy. I would like to believe he has good intentions but from an artistic viewpoint, I find his cinematic work suspect.

Yet the idea of an entire movie devoted to poking fun at the guy seems to induce in me more yawns than giggles. Perhaps if the film had had a better writer or a better director -- one would have thought that having the movie directed by one of the directors of the 1980 comedy Airplane! would be enough but it is not -- I might have been won over, but I was not.

At best, the movie brings to mind the old gag about a book in which what was original was not especially good and what was good was not particularly original. Worse yet, it ends up being patronizing to the very type of patriots it is supposed to be supportive of. For example, the film has one character get off a zinger about how bad country music is after deliberately introducing the audience to a country music concert that is supposed to emphasize the importance of patriotism. I suppose we are supposed to consider that country music was sung by an artist who was the great exception to that rule but then again, if the writers thought so little of country music, why end the movie with a country music concert?

For that matter, since when are only country music fans patriots? Are we really supposed to believe that Americans who prefer other forms of music -- especially, American forms of music like jazz -- are not real Americans? And if so, by whose definition?

If the movie had had anything creative to say about the hypocrisies of the left -- and let's face it, there are many such hypocrisies to criticize -- I might have been won over. But instead the movie seems content to illustrate the hypocrisies of the right. Thus, we get a lot of jokes about illegal aliens -- after a decade which has seen a lot of Hispanics of dubious citizen status volunteer for the U.S. Armed Forces in the wake of 9/11. A lot of jokes about the implausibility of Christian terrorists -- at a time when most abortion clinics still worry about pro-life bombers and snipers. A lot of jokes about the hardships many white Americans have had to go through because of increased security procedures -- and yet none about the problems equally loyal Arab or Indian Americans have faced due to racial profiling.

Fine. I get it. An American Carol is supposed to promote a conservative version of what American society should be like, a version they do not connect with director Michael Moore. But many of the Hispanics I grew up with and some of the various African- and Asian-Americans with whom I have worked here in this country are conservative too. They too support the Armed Forces and they too support the traditional family values that white conservatives often treat as their exclusive property. So why are such folks rarely seen in this flick until a group of multiracial military veterans show up toward the end of the picture? Am I supposed to believe that such folks are good enough to die for this country but not to live in it? And if so, why exactly should I be supportive of such an attitude?

I might not like everything Michael Moore stands for but I hate the hypocrisy of this movie far worse. And this from an one-time subscriber to The National Review who once voted for Ronald Reagan.

Latino Lycanthropy


What is it about werewolf movies that sends filmmakers scurrying back to the safety of good old Mother England? What is wrong with the good old U.S.A.?

Granted, Guy Endore managed to successfully get away with setting a werewolf novel (The Werewolf of Paris) in nineteenth-century France and the Hammer film based upon his book took it a step further and set its werewolf story in Spain. Plus more recently John Sayles set a werewolf story (The Howling) here in the States. Then, of course, there was the more recent werewolf movie An American Werewolf in Paris, but the less said about that one, the better. There was also the French movie The Brotherhood of the Wolf but I am not quite sure that it is fair to consider that a werewolf movie though it is considerably better than An American Werewolf in Paris.

Anyway, for the most part, when we Americans usually think of werewolves, we think of England. Thus we get titles like Werewolf of London, She-Wolf of London and An American Werewolf in London. Perhaps because we have gotten used to associating horror stories with the English or perhaps because we prefer the contrast between the traditional British stiff upper lip and a raging beast. Or perhaps we have got so used to having our best horror stories done by the English that we seem to forget that other people can do them too.

Perhaps it is just as well we do not see more attempts to import the werewolf legend into America given the number of people around the world who already like to associate the Yanks with barbarism. And as a Latino, I should find my obsession with werewolves especially ironic because so many of the characteristics associated with werewolves -- hairiness, thick eyebrows, violent tempers and funny hands -- are also associated with Latinos. Coincidence?

Who knows?

In any event, one would think that any werewolf movie that had a Hispanic actor like Benicio del Toro playing the lead character would be right up my alley. And it would be nice to say that 2010’s The Wolfman was the ideal werewolf movie. Indeed, it would be nice to say at the very least that The Wolfman was a memorable movie, but unlike many horror films I’ve seen, I doubt it will be remembered as fondly as the original 1941 Universal movie which bore a similar name. In fact, I suspect the producers will be lucky if the film is remembered at all within a decade or two.

Part of the problem is that this particular werewolf movie has nothing particularly interesting to say. It starts promisingly enough with the death of some poor English guy being stalked by what appears to be the second coming of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Then it is revealed that said victim is the brother of Del Toro’s Lawrence Talbot character. Why he does not look much like Del Toro is never adequately explained. We are shown a portrait of Lawrence’s Latin mother but it is never explained whether or not she was also the mother of Lawrence’s brother or whether they were half-brothers. Was Lawrence’s mother really just the mistress of Lawrence’s father or is there some other explanation? The film never explains and normally it would not matter if the actual story was half as interesting as such questions. But it is not.

The film does have some potentially interesting angles though. For example, Del Toro’s Talbot is a Shakespearean actor with obvious father issues. Since his father is played by a British actor (Anthony Hopkins), it’s tempting to predict more than a few obvious references to Hamlet and Macbeth but fortunately the movie does not go that route. However, the route it does travel is not much of an improvement.

Nor do Talbot’s acting skills play any crucial role in his investigation of his brother’s death. Since the movie is called The Wolfman, it’s not much of a surprise that the mystery culprit behind his brother’s death turns out to be a werewolf. Nor is it shocking that Talbot ends up being bitten by said werewolf.

I was surprised to find out that Emily Blunt played the would-be bride of Talbot’s late brother. Ms. Blunt looks very good in period dress and it would be nice to say that her character played a memorable role in this movie but unfortunately, she is more often an afterthought. The film flirts with the idea of a romance between her and Talbot but it never develops it too fully or convincingly -- which is a shame since such a development would have made the climax of the movie a lot more powerful.

The most memorable part of the movie is the brief view we get of Talbot’s late mother. In many ways, she seems symbolic of the film’s problems since apart from Ms. Blunt, she is very easily the most eye-catching part of the cast -- yet the movie has no idea what to do with her save to kill her off.

For that matter, it has no idea what to do with Del Toro or Hopkins save to use them in combination with elements from far better movies. Perhaps the true problem lies in the fact that such an expensive production with high-profile actors dares not say anything particularly new or original lest it lose its potential audience. And yet by playing it safe, it ensures that any repeat viewings this movie might gain would be few. Very few. So perhaps this production was indeed cursed. But not in a way that can be ended with a silver bullet.

Real Men and Real Girls


It's tempting to describe 2007's Lars and the Real Girl as the flip side of May. Instead of a mentally disturbed woman whose only friend is a real doll, it gives us a mentally unsettled man whose only friend is a real doll. (Actually the official name for the title character's inanimate companion is Real Girl but let's not get into that.)

The story could have gone into several different directions including the same dark way May went but instead it chooses to go in a lighter, more comic way. Though the doll of the title is anatomically correct, there is only one reference -- a subtle one, fortunately -- to this fact. Indeed, for a movie with so many perverse possibilities, Lars and the Real Girl is surprisingly conventional. Like May, it does have dark elements, but unlike May, the story concerns the title character's triumph over potential darkness, not his surrender to it.

Anyway, the movie concerns a shy young man named Lars who lives in a small town but never gets emotionally involved with anyone apart from his brother -- on whose property he lives -- and his sister-in-law. Shortly after his sister-in-law gets pregnant, Lars starts going crazy and orders a Real Girl through the mail. He calls his recent acquisition Bianca and starts treating it like a real person. He never uses the Real Girl for its intended purpose but he does talk about it as if it were real and as if it were an actual girlfriend.

His brother and sister-in-law are not sure how to respond to this so they consult the family doctor who advises them to go along with Lars' delusion. Eventually they talk the whole town into going along with Lars' delusion and Bianca starts to get a bit of a social life. Along the way, Lars get obsessed with what it takes to be a real man and then something happens and Lars is forced to confront something he has not wanted to confront...

It would be easy for me to wax cynical about this movie. After all, I spent several months in a small town in Michigan very similar to the town depicted in this movie and during that time, I was very lonely except for the weekends when I visited my relatives in Detroit. By all rights, I should be condemning this movie for its lack of realism. After all, people do not always rally around the well-deserving shy young person in real life and small town life is not always as friendly and heartwarming as it appears in movies like this.

But it says something about the subtlety of the script, the acting and the direction that I actually found myself won over by the movie despite all the myriad opportunities for me to go, “But that would never happen in real life.” And this from someone who usually rolls his eyes at feel-cute movies like Little Miss Sunshine.

Perhaps I gave Lars and the Real Girl a break because after seeing my share of cynical new movies, it felt good to finally see a modern movie which said, “Yes, I know it's a harsh world out there. But sometimes people can be a whole lot better than you give them credit for. Maybe not the people you know right now but the people you might someday meet in the future.”

In short, this flick is basically a modern-day Frank Capra movies for people who normally hate modern-day Frank Capra movies. And that is not a bad thing to be. Mind you, if they bring Bianca back for a sequel like Son of Lars and the Real Girl, I will not be quite so charitable.

Bordering on Romance--or Just Crossing Over?


Here’s a thought next time you are tempted to go on a rant about those damn Hollywood liberals: How likely is it that today’s Hollywood liberals would green-light a motion picture in which an entire police department comes to the aid of an illegal alien? Not likely, you say?

True, there has been more than a few movies produced during the last three decades in which individual various members of the law enforcement community -- especially members of the Border Patrol -- went to bat for undocumented individuals -- but most of these were generally characterized as mavericks suffering from a crisis of conscience. Even in the 2009 movie Crossing Over, it was generally understood that the immigration agent who bucked procedure on behalf on such an individual was not likely to expect a whole lot of support from his fellow agents. Indeed, the one agent in that movie who was most successful at “aiding” such an individual was doing so for obviously selfish reasons: the individual in question was a cute young Australian woman and by “helping” her, the agent in question managed to “rent” himself a mistress. (If that sounds like a disgusting plot development to you, rest assured that the screenwriter agreed with you and was not shy about having his characters point that out.)

So imagine my surprise when toward the end of 1935’s Romance in Manhattan, a movie made at a time when sympathy toward undocumented immigrants was hardly greater than it is today, a key plot twist involved an illegal alien getting aid from the local police department. Not just one conscience-stricken maverick helped out; the whole force did. And though it could be argued that their efforts went to a worthy end -- aiding a well-meaning immigrant in his quest to do the right thing and gain U.S. citizenship -- it still seemed like such an unlikely development as to seem like something out of a fairy tale.

Nevertheless, Romance in Manhattan seems more watchable than most entries in the “Lo! The Poor Illegal Immigrant!” school of filmmaking because it does not seem to be concerned with establishing political talking points as much as it is telling a story. In this case, the story involved a pretty young princess named Sylvia Dennis (played by Ginger Rogers) “masquerading” as a chorus girl who one day stumbled upon Czech immigrant Karel Novak (played by Francis Lederer), a hungry beggar who proved to be a handsome prince from across the sea. Okay, in actuality, he was more a pauper than a prince and Dennis really was a chorus girl but he was still handsome and kind-hearted and she was friendly and beautiful and it was no surprise to the movie audience that Novak and Dennis soon became romantically involved.

But, alas, there were obstacles to this couple’s happiness. Novak dared not express serious interest in Dennis because he feared she would be unwilling to marry a non-citizen. But when the landlady discovered that he had been staying at her apartment -- with her kid brother, Frank, around as chaperone, natch -- and local authorities threatened to take custody of Frank away from Sylvia unless she got married, Novak‘s hand was forced. Novak approached a local lawyer in hopes of gaining American citizenship so that he could marry Dennis only to find himself betrayed by the lawyer and slated for deportation. Could anyone prevent such a revolting development?

It could be argued that Novak was a lot more idealistic about America than most real-life immigrants and indeed, some of the funniest scenes in the movie involve the contrast between his immigrant idealism and Dennis’s native-born cynicism. For a change, it was the European newcomer who played the idealist and the American citizen who played the snarky cynic. But in this film, such a turnabout worked because both characters were portrayed as essentially decent types who wanted to do the right thing and who only ended up in trouble due to circumstances beyond their control.


Of course, it is hard to imagine this same scenario working nowadays. Too many American movies and TV shows depicting the darker side of American life are shown to foreign audiences for today’s immigrants to be as believably naïve as Novak. And indeed, one of the few virtues of 2009‘s Crossing Over is its willingness to realistically depict illegal aliens as both victims and victimizers.

One Jewish illegal, for example, attempted to scam the immigration authorities by posing as a Rabbinical student while, ironically, his Australian girlfriend became a victim of the unscrupulous immigration agent mentioned above. Moreover, another subplot involved a family of Iranian immigrants and their children which may or may not have been involved in an honor killing. Unfortunately, these three storylines are forced to interact with other storylines: one involving the adoption of an African refugee by the wife of the unscrupulous immigration agent, another involving the involuntary deportation of an assertive Bangali teenager who made the mistake of defending the 9/11 hijackers to the wrong audience, one involving a Korean-American cholo wanna-be who engaged in one last crime the day before his naturalization ceremony and one involving a dead Hispanic woman. Not all these subplots worked and while I admired the ambition of the filmmaker’s attempt to deal with subjects most Hollywood filmmakers would not touch with a ten-foot green card, I could not help but feel that the individual stories deserved better.

The young Australian immigrant’s story seemed especially underdeveloped. While Ray Liotta managed to be very convincing as the agent who exploited her, there was something about the way the camera focused on almost every square inch of the Aussie that could be legally uncovered in a mainstream Hollywood movie that made it seem as if the filmmaker was sending a mixed message: one that read not so much “oh, look how awful it is for such a nice young woman to be at the mercy of such a scoundrel” as “oh, look how awful such a nice young woman has it -- and how cute she looks without her clothes on.” Let us hope that that message was unintentional. And be glad that such scenes were not possible in 1935.

Eyes and Dolls

Her name is May.

She has a doll.

She also has a lazy eye.

Her perfectionist mother thought she would be very unpopular because of her lazy eye so she covered it with an eye patch.

But the eye patch made May even more unpopular.

So her mother gave her a doll named Suzy.

Suzy looks like May.

But unlike May, Suzy is trapped in a glass box and never gets taken out.

May never gets taken out either but she at least is not in a glass box.

But she sometimes feels as if she was in one.

May has a friend named Polly.

Polly calls her “doll.”

Polly doesn’t call her “doll” because May reminds her of Suzy. After all, Polly had never seen Suzy.

Polly calls her “doll“ because she’s the type of person who likes to call people “doll.”

They both work for an animal doctor who can‘t speak English very well. Polly can‘t understand him but May understands him just fine.

The person whom May can’t understand is Adam.

Adam is this guy May likes.

She wants him to ask her out but she is awkward in the ways of love.

Adam calls her weird but it’s okay with May because he likes weird.

At least, for a little while.

But after a long while, Adam gets tired of weird and decides to quit May for a more conventional girl friend.

Meanwhile, Polly is coming on to May, teasing her with the fact that she is a lesbian.

Polly is a lesbian, that is, not May.

Though May looks very longingly at Polly’s neck for a so-called straight girl.

May makes her own clothing so she is very good at sewing.

She is not so good at relating to people.

She doesn’t make friends very easily and the only person she talks to on a regular basis who really seems to get her is Suzy.

But Suzy can’t talk back.

And Suzy may have been an okay friend when May was a child but now May is grown up. And a grown up woman can only be content with dolls for so long.

Even if she herself is a “doll.”

May is trying like hell to break out of her own glass box.

But she can’t quite make it out.

And no one around her seems to be helping her.

So one day she decides to help herself.

And, of course, the rest of her story is about what happens on that day.

And about why one should be especially nice to girls like May.

And careful.

Even if they don't have a movie named after them.

All Greek to Me

So that's why I'm having such a hard time appreciating today's movies -- my brain is hardwired for ancient Greek. Okay, it is not but after the many times I have read Bulfinch's Mythology as a kid and watched the original Clash of the Titans as an adult, one would think it would be.

In any event, since I am a hardcore mythology buff I was really looking forward toward seeing Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and I am glad that I recently got the chance to see it. But I must confess I had mixed emotions about the movie. On one hand, enough of the action sequences worked that I feel silly pretending that I had a bad time watching the movie. But the setup for those action sequences -- ay, Dios! The filmmakers made it seem so obvious that they were only marking time till the next action sequence that I wondered why they bothered.

Director Chris Columbus -- the director of this movie -- apparently wanted to make another Harry Potter movie -- which explained why so much of this movie plays like a thinly veiled Harry Potter movie. Now I understand that Harry Potter movies are hot right now but not everyone who goes to the movies nowadays wants to see a Harry Potter movie. Even if they are Harry Potter fans. Or at least they do not want to as often as Chris Columbus seems to think they do.

Even if they did, it is hard to endorse a movie that used a bright and funny actress like Catherine Kenner so badly that I cringed every time I saw her onscreen. I get that the movie was not about her character -- but so what? The James Bond movies are not really about Q, the Indiana Jones movies are not really about Indy's mentor Marcus and the Harry Potter movies are not really about Hermione but all these supporting characters still get better treatment than Ms. Kenner's character does in this movie -- and she is playing the hero's mother. (I guess I already know what movie I am not renting for my mother this Mother's Day.)

But seriously, the one good point in the movie's favor is that it made me want to read the Rick Riordan novel that inspired it. After all, the movie does have some clever ideas in spite of itself -- it even manages to come up with a good way to work in a Lady Gaga song, which I did not think was possible -- and I suspect most of them came directly from the book.

Indeed, given the movie's premise -- a boy discovers that he is the son of an Olympian God and has to go on a quest to recover a fabulous talisman (the lightning of the title) to help rescue his mother -- I am surprised that the filmmakers had such trouble. Do not all kids think their parents are gods at some point in their lives? Do not all children like to think they are special? Do not a lot of modern children have issues with missing parents who may as well be mythological deities as far as the children are concerned? And do not most children who grow up have to learn to fight back against real-life monsters? Such monsters may not be as obvious as the Medusa or the Minotaur but they can still be formidable. For example, the mythological beings in Hollywood who keep making abysmal movies seem all too powerful nowadays. Where is the likes of Perseus or Hercules now that we need them?

Still Waiting to Be Impressed

I finally broke down and saw the 2003 movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a few years ago. To paraphrase a line from Roxanne:

I heard it was going to be bad, but I didn't expect it to be... bad.

The sad part is that with a little effort and foresight, many of this movie's problems could have been avoided in a way that even a die-hard Alan Moore fan like myself -- who was quite an aficionado of the original Moore comic book series which alleged inspired this movie -- would be won over.

Wanna have a vampiric character go out in the sunlight? Then take a cue from author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and EXPLAIN why she can be out in the sunlight. Show her wearing earth-filled shoes or mention that it is okay for her to appear on cloudy days or something. As many readers of the original Bram Stoker novel have noted, the whole “sunlight kills vampires” thing is mostly a Hollywood invention anyway.

But hey, if John Sayles can take time in The Howling to have a character explain what works and does not work against werewolves, then why not a similar exposition scene in this movie?

Also, if you are going to set a film's story in Venice, it might be a good idea to actually film in a locale that looks like Venice. And not like, say, Prague... And if you wish to have a car chase -- which would be dubious enough in a movie set in the Victorian era -- it might be a good scene to write your script in such a way that said chase does not take place in Venice.

While I am at it, that last scene in the movie was supposed to be... What? A homage to Fritz Leiber's short story, “The Automatic Pistol”?

Even if I could bring myself to forgive these nitpicks, there is still the fact that the story just does not work. The script takes a handful of fictional characters who were already famous, drafts them into the Victorian equivalent of the Dirty Dozen and yet depicts them as being just so eager to help out their comrades in arms that it seems ridiculous. Okay, maybe not as ridiculous as the sight of a confessed vampire using the mirror in her compact to adjust her makeup -- but still ridiculous.

Granted, it would probably have taken a mini-series to do Alan Moore’s original work proper justice and even then they would probably screw something up...

In the meantime, there is always the original comic book series...

Death Be Not Loud

Oh, those wacky Latinos and their crazy funeral traditions involving respect for the dead. Don't they realize that the true purpose of funerals is for therapy and that any other consideration is just plain silly and old-fashioned? At least that is the way some British and Anglo-Americans see it. And are not their viewpoints the only viewpoints that are really worth taking seriously?

At least that is the impression I got from two movies I saw recently: 2004's Eulogy and 2007's Death at a Funeral. Both were critically acclaimed comedies that were supposedly to be great -- and both were at best just okay.

Of the two, I liked Eulogy best. Granted, a lot of that was because of actress Zooey Deschanel who has the ability to make even the most modest movie she is in seem more entertaining than it should. But she also has a good cast to back her up. Hank Azaria plays her father Daniel, Piper Laurie plays her grandmother Charlotte, Debra Winger and Kelly Preston play her aunts Alice and Lucy and Glenne Headly plays a wacky nurse named Samantha. Former TV star Ray Romano is also in it as Uncle Skip but the less said about him, the better.

Toward the beginning of the film, Ms. Deschanel's character, Kate Collins, is informed that her grandfather has passed away. Her grandmother assigns her to write an eulogy but Kate does not quite know what to say. She tries to quiz her father, her uncle and her two aunts about the man who was their father but what she gets is of little if any help. Even the local pastor does not seem to know the deceased that well. As you might guess, there proves to be a reason for that.

The movie generally tries to get humor out of a number of family secrets. For example, Uncle Skip still screams for his late father's attention and has two boys who are obsessed with sex and very much into immature practical jokes. Aunt Lucy still fights with her older sister Alice over her open lesbianism and the fact that she brought her live-in partner Judy (played by Famke Janssen) with her for the funeral. Daniel mourns more for his lost career as a child star than he does his late father and supports himself with bit parts in pornographic movies. Kate's mother is dead but still manages to have an embarrassing secret. Aunt Alice seems to have the perfect family -- one that talks way less than she does -- but she too has her secrets...

At first, I suspected that this movie was one of those films that critics love for striking all the right liberal notes without really saying anything new or challenging. The type of movie that would be quite shocking to my grandmother's generation but seems almost old hat to the more liberal members of my own.

But it proved to have a few good moments -- most of them starring Ms. Deschanel, who does a good job of playing straight woman to the other characters. She does not have the showiest part in the movie but she does get to play the one character who is closest to being a recognizable human being.

The other characters have their moments too. For example, I liked Alice's conversation with Lucy about the hopes she had for her baby sister, the scene in which Skip's sons acknowledged his affection but noted that words were not necessary, and the scene in which Charlotte presented Judy with some of her old wardrobe. In other words, the movie worked best when it remembered that its characters were part of a family and not characters in some zany sitcom.

As for Death at a Funeral, that film had a similar formula. A family patriarch dies, all sorts of embarrassing secrets come out and every other family member decides to use the occasion as an impromptu therapy session. The movie did improve toward the end when a lead character got the chance to give an genuinely moving eulogy. But it still seemed like much ado about nothing, if not a self-congratulatory excuse to make movie-goers happy that “at least their family was not like that.”

Oh, well. A lot of my family's behavior around the time of my father's death in 2003 would have seemed strange to outsiders too. Then again we did manage to restrain ourselves from making public spectacles of ourselves and we bent over backwards to work out every disagreement we had over my father's estate in a peaceful manner. Plus -- and I know this might sound strange to some non-Hispanics -- we actually showed signs of missing and mourning our late father. I know that is not the type of stuff that makes for a particularly entertaining movie but then I am not quite convinced that a lot of the antics that took place in Eulogy and Death at a Funeral were all that entertaining either. Perhaps it is one of those Latino things that others would not understand.

I'm Dreaming of a Latino Christmas Movie

Geez, one would think that if Hollywood was going to wait until the 21st century to make a Latino Christmas movie, they would at least get it right. Not that 2008's Nothing Like the Holidays was a bad movie. It just was not the instant classic I kinda expected after all the hoopla I read about it.

The movie itself was about a family of Puerto Ricans and their assorted significant others who were gathering for a family Christmas celebration in Chicago. The father (played by Alfred Molina) was a bodega owner who might or might not be having an affair. His wife (played by Elizabeth Peña) was contemplating a divorce. One of his sons was a returning veteran who had issues with the girlfriend he left behind while yet another son was having issues with his white non-Hispanic wife. Though many scenes in the movie were neatly done -- the trailer had led me to expect a far broader comedy than ever turned up on screen -- it was still depressing to note how familiar some of the plot elements were: a murdered sibling, a non-Latin wife, a spouse who may or may not be unfaithful, an old girlfriend who may or may not have been pregnant with a certain family member's illegitimate child... To be fair, things improved toward the end but for a while there the movie seemed all too predictable.

Moreover, certain details were off. I could not help but wonder why a Puerto Rican would have the first bars of a Mexican folk song as a tune on his car horn and why Alfred Molina's character used the same Spanish term of endearment for his wife that I used to use for my Mexican grandmother. Granted, even the best screenwriters can't know everything, but given that one of the movie's screenwriters -- Rick Najera -- was Latino, I kinda expected a bit more than the same old Hollywood hand wave.

It is to the cast's credit that the movie is still watchable. (Though I must confess that seeing former I Married Dora star Elizabeth Peña as a would-be grandparent was almost as shocking to me as seeing her former co-star Juliette Lewis appear on an episode of My Name Is Earl.) Indeed, I found the movie to be a pleasant enough time-waster. But I hardly doubt I will be visiting it again next winter. And is not the whole point of a holiday movie that you wish to see it over and over again?

Maybe they will get it right next time.