Fackham Hall - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I'd seen the trailers for this and then it was the Screen Unseen so I figured I scored - no need to use another of my movie slots for it. From the trailers it looked like a reasonably fun broad satire of English aristocracy in the time of Downton Abbey. I was half right.

Don't get me wrong. I like satire. I like an occasional broad easy-to-digest movie that's full of sight gags, pratfalls, and misunderstandings. They're like Tom Clancey books - no surprises and mind mulch for vacations.

I was to be disappointed.

The opening shot is a fancy car pulling through a big fancy gate to a big fancy house - Fackham Hall. Underneath that seems to be the family motto: "Incestus ad Infinitum" so yeah, it's gonna be broad humor and gutter humor.

Again, I can enjoy those if done well. Not everything has to be nuanced. The problem I had with this movie is that it never seemed to decide what it was going to skewer with the satire. They took a scattershot approach that left everything floating on the surface of truly beautiful sets - kind of like oil over a scenic pond. The pond is not improved by the oil nor was the manor house improved by the script.

I get it. It's satire. It's not supposed to be a literary masterpiece. But what I expect from a movie is some kind of coherency. That's where it falls very short. With their unfocused approach and habit of returning to jokes to the point of them being more eye rolling than amusing this movie, well, blows.

It has all the things they were looking to skewer - inbreeding in the aristocracy, the rebellious daughter, the runaway daughter, the obligatory "odd animals being shot out of the air", the requirement to marry a first cousin or the family is kicked out, the missing family member who lied about their age and ran off to fight in the war, the street urchin turned scoundrel, etc. There's so much of it that nothing comes into focus.

I'll give you the rundown, as much as I can remember it. I'm woefully behind on my movie reviews.

The scoundrel is given a job to deliver a letter to Fackham Hall. Yeah. In the affected accents you know exactly what that sounds like. The younger daughter is going to marry the first cousin to save the family. The older daughter refused to do it. The scoundrel is mistaken for someone applying for a houseboy type job and gets hired, without delivering the letter. The family member that lied about his age and went to the war is shown in flashbacks to be a toddler in an officer uniform. Ha ha, right?

Cue the scenes of sight gags racking up with the younger daughter running out of the church to go away with what seems to be the night soil collector, happily being treated like chattel, leaving the older daughter to marry for the sake of the family. The older daughter who has taken to the scoundrel, of course. The housekeeper takes a dim view of the whole thing. The father is murdered and the inspector comes in to figure it out. Or not. But it pushes up the urgency of marrying the first cousin.

The daughter has a roll in the hay with the scoundrel. The housekeeper sees them going into the barn. She decides to use that as a way to frame the scoundrel for the murder. The older daughter agrees to marry the cousin. The priest again (this is one place where they definitely went back to the same gag too many times when the priest reads the next word after a sentence to give it a whole new naughty meaning, then corrects himself) starts the marriage.

The scoundrel gets away because the police officer happens to be someone he met in the pub he took the oldest daughter to prior to the barn situation. He does get arrested, reads the letter, and finds out he's the older brother of the cousin. Cue farcical jail escape during the wedding. The housekeeper blocks him and relates what really happened to the father - a series of stupidly done actual accidents that ended up killing him (he fell onto the letter opener to stab himself, etc.) but he gets past. The two of them get married. All is sweetness and roses.

Of course she still married her cousin. In the credits where they show how each family member ended up the younger sister bucked tradition by marrying a SECOND cousin. Hilarious.

I wanted to like the movie. I was ready to give it a very fair chance. However they made it impossible to do so by, well, making a bad movie.

Rental Family - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I love Brendan Frasier. Always have, always will. It's his smile. It gets me every time. He's also a darn good actor who was done dirty.

This movie lets him ooze his shy charm over everything. I would almost think they wrote the role for him due to how well it matches his style. I wouldn't be surprised. But it works for him.

He's a commercial actor in Japan so expect some of the required "fish out of water" situations both physically and culturally. He had one very popular ad job and he's been doing bit parts ever since. We open with him going to yet another audition and being told they'll get back to him. His agent tells him about another job while he's waiting to hear back from this one.

Cue some shots of him not fitting in - standing out, quite literally, from the crowd, fitting into the public transportation seats (yeah, movie poster), etc. He does speak fluent Japanese and has the cultural basics down cold. We find out later he's been in Japan for eight years and decided to stay there. Reasons? Unknown.

The other job is what the movie is about and addresses social issues in Japan. One of the big ones is loneliness. Another is their strict social expectations. His first job is to be the American at a funeral. Americans are actually a status symbol in some Asian situations. Go figure.

He finds out the funeral was a set piece for the not-dead guy to experience the social ritual of the funeral he won't get because he's not of that status. Back at the office Phillip finds out more of what they do and why - they fill holes in people's lives. His first job is to be the groom at a wedding.

We find out that the bride has a same sex partner and wants to move to Canada with her so they can live in a way they can't in Japan. Her family knows but has to put up the pretense that she's marrying Phillip so not to be ostracized. It's an insight into the type of things he's going to experience.

We meet his coworkers who do things like pretend to be a mistress apologizing to the wife. It's actually called Apology Service. The man doesn't have to bring his real mistress to meet his wife but still gets the catharsis of the fake mistress apologizing for his mistakes. Cultural thing.

His main job is going to be pretending to be the father of a young girl so that she can get into an elite school. Single mothers have a stigma so she needs him to pretend to be the father who's around until the school interview. In preparation the mother wants to have him spend time with them so they seem like more of a family but also not tell her daughter that he really isn't her father, so that she doesn't spoil anything.

His other job has him pretending to interview an older Japanese actor because his daughter wants him to feel relevant. He's actually a fan of this guy so he's able to keep up the act and conversations. The man is getting forgetful, which means he can't get roles even though he's still famous.

OK. Enough plot detail. On to summaries.

The situation with the actor is that the guy wants to go back to his home province and have Phillip take him. His daughter won't do it. Phillip won't do it but does take him out for lunch. That's when he finds out that the guy wanders off. He does end up taking him to his home province so we get some lovely shots of unincorporated Japan. The actor has a heart attack and Phillip is arrested, accused of kidnapping him. More on this later.

The one with the kid is about the same. She warms up to him eventually and since she has no reason not to think of him as her father gets close. When the mother finds out she's upset and Phillip gets called on the carpet by his boss. Phillip gets upset because he's trying to do what he feels the company wants - for him to play the role. He gets schooled in how much to get involved.

The interview at the school goes well. The daughter is accepted. Phillip is told to take a hike. The daughter sees him on TV in one of his minor roles and finds out the truth. She eventually confronts him and they end up as friends. Heartwarming.

There's a small side story about him being hired by a guy to play video games with him. Over time the guy cleans himself up, the two of them clean his house up, and they end up doing things outside the house too. This is another loneliness thing in that this guy is buying a friend. It's both sad and relatable.

As the story progresses we find out the owner of the company has hired himself a wife and son to be waiting for him when he gets home every night. He's the same as any of their customers and the strain of the false situation finally has him realizing just how messed up the whole thing is.

Phillip gets accused of kidnapping the actor because they went off without permission from his daughter and it seems like they didn't tell her. It's a decent trip of trains, boats, then walking so it's long. The employees of the company decide to pretend to be lawyers to sort out things with the daughter, only to have a police officer show up. It's the company owner, pretending to be police to do the same thing.

The employees each break out of what they've been doing and see it for the damage it does. The company stays in business but without some of the less savory things they were doing. Specifically the owner tells a potential customer they no longer do Apology Service. 

I honestly can't remember what happens to Phillip and the job. The movie ends on something that was part of the actor's storyline which makes sense given the contemplative nature of the movie.

It's a melancholy movie. The only person who is actually happy is the little girl for a while when she thinks her father is back in her life, and that gets ruined too. I guess the actor got to take his trip, so that was good for him. The whole movie is about a closed society and relationship dynamics. It doesn't translate well outside of the Japanese culture because they have such a fossilized social system that most other places don't. I don't go for that "human experience" thing because the experience is based on the humans, and both of those change for context.

It's a good enough watch. It will draw you in to the stories to a certain amount. There's just a lot of storylines to juggle so none of them really get explored. Even Phillip's story isn't really there.

The Running Man - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I've read the book so I know the story. That doesn't mean I'm not going to try to enjoy a retelling of it. Book adaptations are rarely identical to the source material. That's what makes them adaptations. Stephen King stories can be particularly challenging because of how much is what happens in the characters' heads, which does not lend itself to a visual medium.

We know the outline. Man goes on the show to get money for his sick family. He has encounters along his time trying to stay ahead of everyone trying to kill him. He takes down the system. It's not a bad outline and it works for action movies or they wouldn't keep doing it.

In this telling Ben Richards has been blacklisted from pretty much any employment due to things like trying to form unions. He's A Good Guy who just wants to make life better for his family. While he's on the couch, due to quite literally not being able to get a job, he's watching the game shows and how much money people win on them. There's not just The Running Man. There's a variety of games designed to humiliate the players for the viewers' amusement and some cash. Cash? Credits? Whatever.

He decides to audition for one of the low risk shows. The wife is concerned. He assures her he's not going for the brass ring - The Running Man. He gets in line and goes through the audition process. Turns out they run through the audition process to find out what show best suits the person, if any. Ben, of course, ends up chosen for The Running Man along with two others.

He's hesitant but there's a graduating return scale based on how long he stays alive during the thirty days and how many of the show's Hunters he takes out. So his wife will get the money she needs for medicine for their sick child no matter what. They even put his family into their version of witness protection because it seems they've had situations where people have gone after player's families. He signs on the bottom line but is full of righteous fury about it.

OK. Onto the running and the head start. He stops by someone he knows who does electronic and other repairs to get some equipment, including weapons. He's got a stupidly obvious watch-type thing that counts down how long until his next video needs to be mailed. Then he's off and Running.

The bulk of the movie is him trying to not get killed, killing a couple of Hunters more or less by accident, and finding people out there who are willing to help him. One of those is a conspiracy theory podcaster who fills him in on some of the things about the game. They always choose three people - the quick kill, the overconfident mid game kill, and the one who will go near the distance. The podcaster helps him get to the boonies where he can wait out the clock. Calendar. Game.

Nope. Doesn't work out that way. He's ratted out by someone who wants the reward so he's off and Running again. He ends up taking a hostage when he's trying to get to the border (I think?) who goes from brainless network fangirl to seeing the larger issue underneath. She ends up helping him get to the next, and final, phase.

He demands a plane, he gets a plane. He's got the top Hunter with him. Woo. This is where it all comes crashing down on him. The smarmy network guy tells him his family has been killed, then offers him a deal to have his own show, hunting down people. Cue some angst. Cue the top Hunter trying to do the hunting thing. Turns out, gasp, that guy is the one who lasted the longest in The Long Run and was offered the job on the show. It's all rigged!

Ben reveals all of this to his now adoring fans. The network audience gets riotous. There's rioting all over. The network executive gets to find out what happens when the crowd turns against you. Ben flies the plane into the building. He's a martyr.

I believe the book leaves it open as to whether or not he survived the plane crash. The movie does not. They show him taking out network stuff and hooking up with his family, now in a tidy area of the city, so there's the happy ending that's necessary for The Good Guy.

It's a fun action movie if you like those. There's banter. There's some things that someone who's not special ops trained shouldn't be able to do but does anyway. There's characters to like and ones to dislike. Overall it's got the mix right and it's exactly what you should expect from the trailers.

Now You See Me, Now You Don't - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I liked the first movie of the series and never got around to watching the second one, a situation I rectified before seeing this one. I liked the second one, by the way.

I'll get this out of the way because it bothers me greatly. The movie starts with a warning that there will be flashing lights and such for those people who are bothered by them. I'd be pissed if I were one of those people, bought my ticket, and then found out about this. They used to post signs in the lobby about it and I feel it should be noted in the online/app ordering as well.

This is what you can expect from one of the series - rather implausible situations where everything is pre-planned and goes perfectly. Of course, if you expect anything else you're watching the wrong movie series. This just takes it into slightly more absurd territory.

They're obviously ready to continue the franchise, weaning us off the existing characters, with a few new magicians. Younger ones, of course. They're big into the use of technology along with traditional magic so that gives more options for situations.

They're still The Horsemen. They still go after bad guys and drain their bank accounts. Nothing new there. They get an assignment, they do it. This time it's a thinly veiled DeBeers-like diamond mining family. The heiress is an icy blonde who, shocker, hates magic. Nope. I couldn't make that one up. The goal is for them to steal the signature diamond that just happens to be taken out of decades long storage in a secret Arabian buried vault for some event.

The secret Arabian buried vault. Seriously. It's set in the middle of the desert. There's two armed guards at the entrance. There's a high security keypad. There's the mandatory long elevator ride down to the vault. There's more security stuff. Sheesh. This one set piece is so, well, outré that I give it its own "WTF?" for whoever approved it.

Anyway.

They go to some special house out in the English countryside that's full of old magic tricks and history. They find the information they need to do their job. They use the magic stuff to confuse the police who the bad lady arranged to arrest them. Yeah yeah.

They do social engineering to get to the diamond, crash the fancy ball to do the close up magic to get it and such, use the company's F1 car to distract (that's why they're in the desert where the vault is), get caught, get dropped into a deathtrap, get out of the deathtrap, and eventually foil the bad guy. Or girl, in this case.

One of the new kids is revealed to be the half brother of the evil lady who she thought she killed when she killed his mother, who was obviously fooling around with their father. He's the rightful heir. Yeah yeah.

They do the reveals of how they did all the tricks and that's where you have to suspend disbelief. Things like knowing exactly what the secured display for the diamond looks like so they can duplicate it to their needs, faking her out into thinking she's going to the vault, etc. It makes for interesting cinema and showing how everything has to work perfectly. But it has to work perfectly or none of it works and that's where the movies show their cracks.

Did I enjoy it? Yes. It's pretty much what I expected. Did I find it required me to force myself not to get angry at the incredible sequences of events that had to happen? Also yes. The acting was fine. The new characters to continue the franchise are fine.

I'm not unhappy that I saw the movie. I'll go see the next one, because I know there will be a next one. I will not be doing a movie marathon of these three because I've seen the tricks and how they work. That makes rewatching them rather pointless.

Bugonia - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I was intrigued by this movie from the trailers. I like a good conspiracy theory movie and it seemed like it would have a comedic aspect as well.

I was wrong. It was a good conspiracy theory movie with a good dark comedy aspect as well. There's a big, huge, gaping, yawning difference between comedy and dark comedy. Good dark comedies are difficult to come by these days. It seems like they stopped writing those in the 90s. Maybe this is the return of them?

On one side we have the conspiracy theory guy and his cousin, on the other we have a high-powered executive going about her life. Yup. The conspiracy theory guy believes the high-powered executive is an alien and not one from a different country. An actual honest-to-goodness outer space alien.

I'm going to abbreviate going forward since there's a lot of words I don't want to have to keep typing them. Yes. I know I could abbreviate then search-and-replace but then I'd have to read the whole thing over to make sure it didn't replace things I didn't want replaced.

CG - Conspiracy guy
CGC - Conspiracy guy's cousin
HPE - High-powered executive

The CG is positive that his research shows that the ship from Andromeda will arrive in four days during the lunar eclipse. He's also positive that the HPE is from Andromeda and can get him a meeting with the royals on the ship to try to save earth.

CG is positive that the planet can only be saved with outside intervention. He plans on asking the Andromedans (nicely) to give that help. But first he needs to find one and have them bring him to the ship. The two live out in the county in a typical Midwestern style house and keep bees. They're big on the bees as an analogy for how life intersects, etc.

CGC is neurodiverse. He follows his cousin but isn't as on board with the alien theory. So he's asking questions about whether things are right or not, etc. Fun note - the actor who plays this character is also neurodiverse. He's also got great hair.

The HPE lives in a fancy modern house, does fancy rich person things, has a fancy new black SUV, and wears a fancy black suit (and black Louboutin shoes as demonstrated by a shot from behind as she walks, showing those famous red soles). She's got the big office with glass walls and there's a bit where she's telling her employees to leave on time unless they really have to stay late but she'd prefer if they leave on time unless they have work they want to complete. It's quite the rollercoaster of work-life balance talk.

The two of them come up with a plan to kidnap the HPE. The CG gives his cousin a shot to chemically neuter him (doesn't really, pretends to do it (I think)) so they're both immune to the physical wiles of the HPE, who's female. They also get a lot of an antihistamine cream, which is supposed to protect them as well. There's a lot of details in this movie that it's easy to forget some.

They plan it out and succeed in kidnapping the HPE. She puts up a darn good fight but ends up unconscious in her own SUV. The CGC is given the task of shaving her head, because the CG says they communicate with the ship through their hair. Big props to the actress because they did shave her head for real in that shot.

When they get her back to their house they put her in the basement, chain her down, and slather her exposed skin with the cream. No liberties are taken! Exposed means outside of clothing. The lotion streaks show and were part of what made one of the trailers interesting because it makes her skin look not quite human.

When she wakes up they tell her why they kidnapped her, as stated above. They want to use her to get onto the ship. She does a very good job of using all the negotiating and active listening techniques used in the corporate world to try to get them to let her go. Spoiler - they don't.

The day divisions are placecards showing the earth and counting down the days to the lunar eclipse. More on that later in the review.

The movie quickly skips over time so as not to get repetitive. It comes out that CG's mother is gone and there's a couple of times they show her floating like a balloon. CGC continues to ask questions. HPE is cooperating more in putting on the lotion herself.

CG has created equipment to determine if a person is an Andromedan or not. It's a jury rig that includes electrical pads. He straps her in, twists the dial, and watches the readouts. He keeps turning the dial and watching. He keeps turning the dial and watching. The house lights flicker. CGC rips the pads off, saying that he's going to kill her. The monitoring equipment shows a whole lotta things in red by this time.

CG gets all kinds of apologetic because according to his readings she's part of the Imperial Court. He's seriously apologizing. But he doesn't let her go. Back into the basement as he figures out what to do. He's continuing to ask questions. But when he brought the HPE out of the basement to have a meal (suitably chained to the floor, as is her chair) he gave her a dress, with a name on the dress tag.

HPE puts some things together and remembers that CG's mom was part of a medical drug trial gone bad. There's a flashback to the settlement meeting and now we know that CG's mom is still around, just in a coma. Just. I know. But she's not dead, as it was rather implied.

Oof. Lots going on. Let's keep reviewing. This movie is following a fairly common conspiracy theory theme and there's dark comedy in the whole setup and execution of the plans. It's good.

CGC is getting increasingly bothered about the situation. The lunar eclipse is getting closer and CGC wants to go with the aliens. He wants to go away. CG rather dismisses that and talks around the situation, saying that of course he'll take his cousin with him when they go to the ship but the whole point is to fix earth and live there.

(There's a minor subplot with a police officer who used to babysit CG and still feels bad about something he did during that time, wants to make sure he's doing all right without his mother around, and ends up getting a shovel to the face multiple times later. It's not really part of the main plot but it's there so it's here.)

Every time CG goes into the basement to talk to HPE he has CGC hold a rifle on her. CG is getting more and more upset that HPE won't admit she's an alien. To be fair she does give in and say so but it's patently obvious she's trying another technique to get free. The lunar eclipse is almost happening.

Now I remember (thanks to Wikipedia) the purpose of the police officer-shovel interaction. It gets CG out of the house.

During that time CG is gone CGC goes into the basement to talk to HPE and finally asks her to take him away, that he wants to go away. She agrees that she will. CGC then puts the rifle under his chin and pulls the trigger. Oof. Didn't expect that one.

HPE is able to get the keyring from CGC's pocket and unlock herself. While searching for a way out she finds CG's lab. The lab has a lot of dissected bodies and notebooks. Oddly enough HPE doesn't run out screaming. She takes the time to read those notebooks.

CG comes back into the basement to find his cousin and HPE walking free. HPE uses CG's distress at everything falling apart to tell him there's a cure for his mother in her car. It's hiding in a bottle marked antifreeze. All he has to do is give it to her. He believes her, does it, and watches the predictable result of putting antifreeze into someone's IV bag. He's quite upset, as could be imagined.

HPE reveals she really is an Andromedan and details what they've been doing with earth since the age of dinosaurs. She's got that same air of control she tried to give in the beginning but now it's solid. It's a Christopher Reeves Clark Kent/Superman kind of change. She asks how many Andromedans he's found. He said two. She agrees to take him to the ship. All right then. The day of the lunar eclipse is upon us.

She drives him to her office (at gunpoint), wearing her rather wrinkled suit (she'd changed into a bathrobe for most of her time in the basement) and a wig he'd offered her earlier. She's got that panicked expression and body language as she takes him to her office. Various employees are surprised and glad to see her after her disappearance. She goes into her office, closes the drapes, and pulls out a wooden box that holds the control for the transporter in her office closet. The control is a calculator. When he questions that she tells him it has to look inconspicuous. Fair.

While she's "trying to remember the 58 number sequence" CG shows her that he's wearing a suicide bomber vest, just to make sure she doesn't try anything funny. This does not help her with trying to "remember the number".

She finally gets it, he has to go first since she's got the control, and he gets himself in the closet. The closet holds a couple more identical black suits, another pair of shoes, etc. He closes the door, she presses a key, there's a flash, and his bomb detonates. In true dark comedy fashion she's hit in the head with his head as it flies across the room.

She wakes up in an ambulance with a neck brace and tells them to take her back. Of course they refuse. She gets up, rips off the brace, and runs very fast back to the office. When she gets there she takes the control, gets into the closet, and there's a flash.

Before I continue I want to talk about the time reference place cards. The interesting thing to note is that the closer it gets to the day of the lunar eclipse the more the earth goes from round to flat. By the last card it's full on flat earth with oceans flowing over the sides.

Next we see her rising out a pool of goo, with people in very bulky knitted jumpsuits helping her out. They're not speaking English. They say they couldn't contact her because they'd cut off her hair. Turns out she's the Empress and they've been experimenting on various people from earth, with no success for the future. She decides, while wearing a bulk knitted beehive beanie, to end the experiment and pops the bubble over a model of the flat earth.

The movie closes with scenes of dead people everywhere. They just dropped where they were, whatever they were doing. Guess that pesky problem of people destroying earth got settled after all.

Enough about what happened in the movie. Time for some observations.

I liked this movie. I felt it started to drag a little during the "tell me you're an alien" repetition but it wasn't enough to draw the movie down. When she said she was Andromedan it all made more sense. When she was admitting to being an alien she never said Andromedan, as he demanded she do. She just said "OK. I'm an alien!" in hopes of being let go. She said it after getting free and reading his notes.

The movie had dark comedy moments scattered throughout like treats and tidbits. The set was exactly what you'd expect to see in a family home, right down to the random stuff in the basement and the fire pit outside. That normality contrasted with the perceived absurdity of what was going on.

CG listens to conspiracy podcasts while riding his bicycle throughout the movie. He's got things he worked up at home, including what he says the Andromedan ship looks like. He made that detector, that turns out to darn well work. He's been hunting, and finding, Andromedans to refine everything.

That switch from conspiracy theory to "he was right!" is sudden and rather unexpected. The whole movie leads you down the rabbit hole but you don't expect to find the rabbit. In the transporter scene you see a yellow flash before the bomb goes off. When she uses it, there's a yellow flash. Either she knew the bomb would detonate or she was honestly going to take him to the ship we won't know. But she did activate it, as she said she would.

My movie buddy is a big fan of this director and knew what kind of twists they put into their films. He said he envied me going in cold so I could experience everything as it happened. I'm not sure I want to dig into the director's film library or not. I enjoyed this but I don't know if it's completely to my taste ongoing.

The character development was good all around. The CG is suitably unhinged. The CGC is suitably pulled along for the ride. The HPE is suitably scared for her life, until she's not. The whole movie pivots when the CG comes back after killing his mother and finds an actual real royal Andromedan in his basement, and she's asking the questions now.

I can't really nitpick anything except that bit of drag about halfway through the movie and what seems to be the pointless story with the police officer. It might have been for exposition. They never say what the police officer did while he was babysitting so that one is left up to the imagination. I still say having him in the movie was for the sole reason of having him ask if they'd seen her car since they were near-ish and on a main-ish road, and to get killed when he hears the gunshot when CGC does his thing to himself.

This isn't at all subtle when it comes to being about climate change and all that stuff. The bee decline is real so by having them have hives the discussion flowed naturally into that and how people have that same hive instinct that makes them easy to control. That was one of the things CG accused the HGE of during a basement discussion/rant.

I don't need to watch it again. It was good. It wasn't great. It doesn't have rewatchability since I know the twist ending. That's a problem with twist endings. Once you know there's a twist, the only reason to watch the movie again is to see if there were clues to the twist you missed. I'm not interested enough to look for things I might have missed because I think I got the two big clues - her saying Andromedan only after finding the experiments and her truly using the transporter on CG.

Nuremberg - My Take (Spoilers x 2)

 

Normally I review the fun and fluffy movies. I like those. But this is one of those movies that I wanted to get into and talk about. It's my blog and if this isn't a topic you want to read about feel free to read other movie reviews or other material here. I know this topic isn't for everyone.

This is going to be a double feature, because I read the source book after seeing the movie. I'll keep the movie review to the movie and use the book section to show any differences. And yes, there are differences.

Movie Review

The short form review is that this is a movie people should see. It's well done and it shows a part of history that we need to keep remembering. It's not a typical "Nazis are bad" kind of thing. Yes. We all know how it ends. Good storytelling is all about how you get to that ending and this is mostly good storytelling.

I didn't know this was based on a book until I saw it in the opening credits. The characters in the movie are based on real people. This is not - and I repeat not - a documentary. A number of reviews are nitpicking things like language, knowledge of events, etc. If you're a purist, you're going to have the same issues. Accept it or not.

The main character here is Hermann Göring. Second to him is who is probably meant to be the main character Dr. Douglas Kelley as the psychiatrist who's in Nuremberg prison to make sure all the prisoners are mentally fit to stand trial. Russell Crowe takes over this movie, which casts a shadow over Rami Malek. Rami tries and does a decent job of holding up his end of the story, I'll give him that.

But on to the movie itself.

The opening is great. It's also historically accurate. Hermann Göring surrenders to an American force, and tells them to get his luggage out of the car. After that things slow down considerably.

There's debate over what to do with the captured German high command. The prevailing attitude is to just shoot them and be done with it. But US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson wants more - he wants legal justice. Of course there's no precedent for it and this is where the movie bogs down. These parts are interspersed with what's going on in the prison so it makes for uneven pacing.

The "how do we do this and make legal history" part has to be slow, because it was slow. In short, the justice has to convince the US command, then get the rest of the allies on board. No one thought it would work. Heck, even he had his doubts. The Russians were the last to give in and at least make a show trial of it. This kind of thing simply can't be exciting. It can't. It's necessary to set it up but it's more the times when it's safe to take a bathroom break.

The trailer scene with Colonel Burton C. Andrus saying "Welcome to Nuremberg" has to do with the prison, not the trials. The movie expands on that by telling them the conditions of their imprisonment (bleak) and that they don't get any special privileges as captured officers under the Geneva Conventions because they aren't captured officers. The rather smartly done methods to prevent suicide are explained as well.

The battle of wits between Göring and Dr. Kelley, and the battle of everything between Dr. Kelley and prison commander Colonel Burton C. Andrus take up the slack.

Note here - Colonel Burton C. Andrus is not a pleasant man. Not at all. He's the one who sets the rules at the prison and he's not at all hesitant to enforce them or make new rules as needed. He's not happy about having the psychiatrist there since he sees the prisoners as being held until they're found guilty. But he'll follow his orders.

Where the movie falls flat is trying to show why Göring and Dr. Kelley would become friendly-ish, not that they did do it. The movie makes a reference to the prisoners wanting to talk and Dr. Kelley is more of a neutral listening board than anyone else there. Actually, he's the only one they're allowed to talk to more or less. But they do this to build up how much Göring is a smart opportunist and someone that is going to be a problem to corner in the trial.

Another psychiatrist is brought in to examine the prisoners and there's friction between the two doctors. The new one is immediately talking about how he's planning on writing a book about this and eventually Dr. Kelley admits he's been working on getting the material for one too. There's a tentative agreement to write one together. The new doctor brings in the conflict of someone who's there for the opportunity to talk to the famous Nazis while he still can, while Dr. Kelley is shown as someone who cares for what he considers his patients.

Dr. Kelley warns the justice that he's not going to win against Göring. He's also been asked/told to share anything the prisoners say that will help him win. This brings out the ethical dilemma of Dr. Kelley vs Colonel (I think that was his rank at the time) Kelley. It's pointed out that since his command has been reading his reports there is no violation of doctor-patient confidentiality. Seems he didn't think of that one.

He gains, and then loses, Göring's trust. First by not telling him that his wife and daughter were arrested, then by passing along what he meant to do at the start of the trial. So it's not just sitting out there - his wife was arrested in connection with art theft and the daughter was sent to "the nuns" since she didn't have any parents to take her in. Dr. Kelley lied about it, the other psychiatrist brought it up as a casual aside with a smarmy "Didn't he tell you?".

There's a little scene where Dr. Kelley confronts the prison commander about this, saying "It's not who we are". Later it turns out the commander agreed and worked to have them freed. Adds a touch of humanity to the commander.

There was a suicide by someone who was determined to do it. Given the method anyone could have done this and even after they tightened up the surveillance it could have been done. It just took someone with courage and determination.

The second loss of trust is when Dr. Kelley tells the justice that Göring is going to read a statement before the trial truly starts. When he's asked to enter his plea he starts and one of the tribunal judges shuts him down saying they'll only be able to make statements before sentencing. To be honest that's a bit of a stretch in blaming Dr. Kelley because it's more procedural than anything and none of them wanted to be subject to hearing pre-trial statements from all the defendants. But they made it a betrayal.

Anyhoo. The American justice is running as primary and uses the mountain of documents as his prime material for the trial. Turns out, Göring is a slippery son of a bitch and catches him up on the foundation of his prosecution. The British barrister steps up and rescues him, forcing Göring into an admission that he was doing more than following orders and did know more than he was saying he knew.

Note - they used actual concentration camp footage in the movie trial. It's tough to watch and they didn't spare the horror of what happened. They showed a little too much, in my opinion. It went from gravitas to gratuitous. Not to say that it wasn't horrible, just that they chose to use too much footage. Pacing again.

By the time the trial starts Dr. Kelley has been kicked out of the military for talking to a reporter and only stuck around for the opening of the trial, most likely at the behest of the American justice since I doubt just anyone could get into the courtroom. He forced his way in to see the American justice rather than leaving after being told he was discharged, and told him that he's not going to win using his strategy, then gave him all his notes to use anything there to help him in the trial. Obviously it didn't help him, but if the British barrister read them it did help him. They give him back his notes after that scene in the trial.

I won't leave you hanging, although it was tempting. Early in the movie Dr. Kelley asks Göring why he joined the party. He said he saw Hitler talk above a beer hall and what he said made sense, that he gave hope to Germans after the Treaty of Versailles. He joined immediately. The British barrister got Göring to admit on the stand that he'd still follow Hitler, if he could. That was him admitting that he did know what was going on and was a part of it, which he'd done a very good job of slipping out of in the American justice's questioning. Dr. Kelley took the credit for it, saying he knew that Göring would never betray Hitler.

The movie skips over the trials themselves. The high point was tripping up Göring and the movie didn't need anything after that.

Since it's history I can say that Göring was able to suicide by cyanide capsule just before his execution. This was a real wrench in the works because he was the prize and he took his own way out. They had a brief "what do we do now?" moment then went ahead with the rest of the executions. All the bodies are shown in a cart being taken away. It's not said in the movie but I'll tidy it up here. They were cremated and dumped in the local river to prevent future monuments. 

They do show one execution by hanging and it was done more to follow a narrative and for shock value than to add anything to the story, in my opinion. It also shows that whoever was doing the execution didn't know how to properly be a hangman, as the records do show. But I digress on that point.

In the end this is a movie about Hermann Göring, not Dr. Douglas Kelley. The Academy is going to have a really tough time dealing with how to reconcile what I think is an award-winning performance by Russell Crowe with who he portrayed. I also don't know if he'll be presented as a lead or supporting actor. Regardless it will be interesting to see what they do with him.

The movie ends with Dr. Kelley on the promotion circuit for the book he wrote and drunkenly saying how the Nazis weren't different from anyone else, that everyone has the same capability in them to do these things, that fascism sneaks up on you, etc. His views are not popular. This was before the experiments that show he was right about situation and people doing terrible things to other people if they're ordered/allowed to.

The timing on releasing this movie and the themes are very much timely as to the current situation in America. They go a bit heavy handed on that one without going off script too much. While it's true that the real Dr. Kelley said these things it's far too coincidental that they're part of this movie as well. Funny how a movie about how Nazis are bad uses some of their propaganda techniques itself.

The Book

If you're not into the minutia of the Rorschach Test then this book is not for you. There's a scene in the movie of Dr. Kelley performing the test on several prisoners but for fuck's sake does this book go into how much he absolutely loves the test, who else loves the test, who's a proponent of the test, the history of the test, how the test works, where the test should be used, etc.

The short version here is that Dr. Kelley used the Nazi prisoners as lab rats to try to find a way to identify evil via psychiatry. Most of what he did was not to deal with the prisoners' mental status for trial but for his own research for the book he fully intended to write from the beginning. He did get closer to Göring than any of the other prisoners but Göring was also the most well-known and therefore most marketable prisoner. And to be honest he was the most interesting of the bunch.

The book spends more time on various prisoners and what their mental states were, or at least what he perceived them to be. When the new doctor showed up, that doctor gave different interpretations. Which led to Colonel Andrus being sick of them both. Other psychiatrists and psychologists of various Allied nationalities also had their chances to talk to and examine the prisoners. It was a veritable revolving door of mental health professionals at that prison.

Colonel Andrus deserves a bit more explanation than just being a hard-ass. He was a career military prison administrator who didn't fool around. His job was to enforce discipline and that's what he did. In Nuremberg the prisoners weren't allowed to talk, were on a rigid schedule, were subject to thorough cell searches often, and he would rotate mealtime seating to prevent cliques and potential disruptions. Anything that interfered with the efficient running of his prison was dealt with. For the record he did help Göring's wife and daughter but by having the daughter brought to where her mother was imprisoned, not by getting them freed. The movie got it half right.

The movie had Dr. Kelley taking letters back and forth between Göring and his wife/daughter. This didn't happen. Not at all. Dr. Kelley had no real interest in anything but the prisoners and what he could get from them while he could.

Dr. Kelley asked for transfer once the trial started. He'd gotten everything he could and wasn't interested in the trial itself. He wasn't discharged. He got promoted before leaving the service and went into private practice.

When he left Germany he took all his notes, his souvenirs (he was getting prisoners to autograph copies of their books, that he looted from a local library), and copies of the other doctor's notes. The other doctor was upset about all this. He had to find employment and was kind of full of himself, thinking that his role at Nuremberg had more weight than it did back in civilian life. He also did work on his book but it wasn't a success either.

He had a lecture circuit and settled into criminology since it was something new and he felt that he had a unique insight into it, due to Nuremberg. He milked that for as long as he could and sometimes longer. He settled into teaching and lecturing police departments on using testing, such as the Rorschach Test, on new recruits. He kept those roles for most of his life.

He did talk about how there was no real difference between the Nazi command and anyone else. That's a true thing. He lectured on it. He believed it. And later, after his death, the famous Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgrim experiment proved him right that people will do terrible things if they're given the opportunity to do so.

Dr. Kelley committed suicide, taking cyanide. Kind of ironic but that's what he did. It wasn't a capsule but for some reason he had it in his house.

The book paints a very different picture than the movie. Dr. Kelley is not a likeable person. He was in an unhealthy marriage and was an uncaring, abusive parent. He was out for fame and did whatever he felt he needed to do to get it. The fact that the other doctor's book, and subsequent second book, did do well was probably another reason he took the paths he did.

The book also doesn't paint as pretty of a picture of Göring either. The book has him as more of a petty tyrant who needed constant approval rather than the scheming and composed temporarily inconvenienced man the movie portrays.

The myth that the bodies were cremated at Dachau, which was then torn town, is just that - a myth. They were cremated at a local cemetery. The ashes being scattered in the local river was true and the reason of not wanting a central focus for future neo-Nazis was true. It's why Hitler's bunker is a parking lot. They really did do their best to remove centers for potential martyrs.

I did try to find a way to read the book the real Dr. Kelley wrote but that's in various rare book libraries since it didn't sell well and the publisher didn't print all that many copies. If I could have found it to read I would have, just to contrast it with the movie and this book. But alas, it's not to be.

Tron: Ares - My Take (Spoilers)

 

First and foremost I'm not doing the "It's Tronning Time" or bashing the movie because it stars Jared Leto. That's just lazy when it comes to making a movie review. I also only saw the movie once so I'm going to get things out of order. Deal with it.

The short version is that it's too much story for too little movie. My movie buddy and I agree that this much story would have fit better into one of the six episode series that are so popular on streaming services. That would have given far more time for creating depth, both in characters and story. However, they did not do that so I'll review what they did.

They introduced an interesting concept of disposable, replaceable battlefield assets. When one becomes a casualty, build another. This is especially interesting when it comes to soldiers because it means they show up trained and equipped to continue fighting, with no sense of anything but completing the mission they're given and knowing what prevented that to this point. That's something that could have, but did not, have some very interesting plot development on the ethics and ramifications on the future of warfare.

We got Tron red lasers creating things in the material world. And because they're the red lasers you know they're working for the bad guys. It's nice that some things stay the same - red for bad, blue for good. Red in this movie is the Dillinger company, blue is still Encom. There's no orange as in Tron: Legacy because there's no CLU anymore.

The core plotline is the inherent problem - both red and blue - of object permanence in the material world. Creations last twenty-nine minutes. After that, they disintegrate into dust that for some reason sticks around. You'd think the dust would go back to the Grid or something. I know, they did it for cinematic reasons because watching something/someone crumble to dust instead of just fading out is more interesting. But it's one of those things that make you kind of tilt your head upon reflection. Maybe it did go away later? Maybe it's just the cohesiveness that's lost after twenty-nine minutes but the material sticks around? Dunno. Never mentioned.

Continuing on the things not explored is the power consumption needed to make this stuff. The cinematic effect of (red) lasers playing over the things they're building is great but where is it getting the source material, how much energy are those lasers using, and how practical is the whole mess to do on a larger scale? The intent seems to be completely military in function so those things would matter, even in the initial demonstration.

Good timing in the bad guys kept their presentation under the deadline so the potential buyers didn't see that everything crumbled to dust in a short period of time.

This is where we get to meet Ares, the super soldier. It seems he's the head super soldier - the new CU (Control Unit. Don't quote me on that because it could also have been MCU for Master Control Unit but that term has very different meaning since the original Tron movie came out so it was probably shortened to prevent confusion and lawsuits) of the entire shebang. He's supposed to be super strong, super smart, and super something else. They say "Biblically strong" for some reason, maybe referencing Jared's cult status or some throwback to when they used more religious allegory in the movies. But onward.

Onto the blue side of the board.

There's a quick wrap-up of Sam Flynn stepping away from the company and the sisters who stepped up into leadership. They're also highly skilled computer geeks. Spoiler - one of them has already died of cancer at this point, leaving the other sister grieving and floundering. All future references refer to the living sister as a solo entity.

The Encom CEO is looking for code that Sam left behind somewhere that gives these constructs permanence. The Dillinger CEO is also looking for that code, obviously. So there's your McGuffin - The Permanence Code. She found some way off-grid lair that Sam Flynn left behind, complete with 80s computers and memorabilia. Digging around she finds it and copies it to a very fancy flash drive. She tests it and leaves the test object in place, conveniently pointing the way to the lair for later. Then she's off to bring the code home.

That's our intro to the female lead. She's smart and she's focused on the goal. There's hints that she's doing it because her dead sister was also focused on it but at this point she's pretty one dimensional.

The Dillinger company head finds out she's got the code by doing fancy computer searching using surveillance cameras, etc. just like every computer themed movie has ever used. Grainy footage stays pretty grainy tho and that's a refreshing change from Temu level camera footage being processed into 8k beauty.

Dillinger creates another Ares and team to go get the very fancy flash drive from her. After a chase scene where she's cornered on a pier she breaks it in half and drops it in the water. Obviously the only thing they can do is bring her back to Dillinger so that they can extract the information from her brain. No one brings up the fact that data recovery exists, if they go back and get the pieces of the drive she dropped.

They put her into the Grid as a user so she's in the blue light suit. I guess it's easier for them to get code from her brain when she's code herself? Whatever. She's blue light in a sea of red. There's talk of whether or not she'll survive the process and eventually the Dillinger CEO decides it doesn't matter. He shows up as a Wizard of Oz talking head when he's communicating with the Grid. OK then.

Ares has been spending time doing his own browsing while he's back in the Grid and in another actor it might be seen that he's seeing a world beyond his programming. Leto is stoic so all you see is close up shots of his face as his eyes move, showing that he's reading the stuff that's been inserted by CGI later. Right around now it seems that he's deciding he wants permanence and the only way to get it is to save the Encom CEO to get the code for himself. He also seems to have a moral quandary about the lack of care for the person of the Encom CEO. It shows Ares is growing beyond his programming, as a plot development.

I forget the place in the story where the Encom CEO and Ares kind of team up in the material world and she sends him back to the Grid using their one and only laser portal gun things, promising to bring him back and make him permanent when she can. Of course, the laser portal gun thing, their one and only laser portal gun thing, gets damaged by the Dillinger n second in command when she's there to capture the Encom CEO. Conveniently she drops her red laser portal gun when she disintegrates. This time there's a reason for the laser portal gun remaining - the Dillinger CEO gave it to her when they started the chase.

The laser portal gun thing is important, as you can tell by the amount of film time they spent on them.

Onward.

Ares decides that they only way he's going to get to be permanent himself is to help her, so he does. He gets her to the portal, they meet up with Kevin Flynn who's intrigued by Ares as a "malfunctioning program". There's fancy blue light CGI as he manipulates stuff to bring out the orange Permanence Code, which he calls the Impermanence Code. There's a bit of moralizing because he wants to make sure Ares realizes that he's a one and done if he accepts the code. That's pretty decent of Flynn and is one of the few deeper moments in the movie. Ares accepts the code and his red light turns blue.

The Encom CEO realizes there's another functioning laser portal gun right in front of her freaking face and she and her unmemorable sidekick work to create a single functioning laser portal gun from the two of them to bring Ares back as they promised.

Ares shows up in his new blue light glory. The Dillinger CEO is miffed that he lost out on getting the code and creates a big red light task force to get her back including one of the flying cargo lift shaped ships seen in Tron: Legacy. During this the second in command gets promoted because Ares has gone off his programming and the first thing she does is stab the CEO's mother who's going to shut the whole thing down because she does have ethics. A throwback to Tron: Legacy to the whole "create a perfect world" situation. This is the character defining moment for that CEO as he holds his mom and sees what his directives have done. It doesn't stop him from changing his orders to his creations, tho.

Funny enough both Ares and the second in command have triangle shaped identity disks rather than the more common round ones. The corners pop out into stabby things. I guess they needed to show something special on the higher command models? More than likely it was a merchandising thing. But there it is. The rest of the mooks have the standard round ones.

Sidebar since I can't remember where it fits into the narrative. Pre-permanent Ares sums up the Encom CEO's life, motivations, hopes, and dreams in a single monologue as they're driving through the city. She never gets a chance to develop as a character since it's all laid out for us nice and tidy so we can focus on the special effects and Jared Leto staring at things.

Battle in the city with lots and lots of red lights. There's only one blue light to oppose all this - ARES. Yeah. There you go. The Biblical thing. There's light cycles, there's light flyers, there's light tanks, there's light all kinds of vehicles and weapons. All of which will disintegrate twenty-nine minutes from creation. So really all the good guys need to do is hole up somewhere for a while and it all ends. But that wouldn't be very exciting or colorful.

The end battle is predictably between Ares and the second in command. Somehow he still can do all the fancy fighting that he could before he was made permanent. It's one of those things that was necessary for the movie but brings up the whole moralistic thing of what is Ares when he's code made permanent?

Ares wins, with a little help from time and I think the Encom CEO using a broken red light polearm. He conveniently disappears from the area. The Dillinger CEO ends up putting himself into the Grid to avoid the jail time he earned and gets his own identity disk of unknown origin and while it's round it's of a different design than the regular ones. (Edit: IMDb trivia says its the SARK program from his grandfather.)

There we go. The movie. There's a way to get things between the two worlds now. There's a way, only found in one program so far, to make Grid things permanent in the material world but it's implied that once they're gone they can't make another Grid-to-material one even though they have the code sitting right there. 

We're set for another Tron movie with the Dillinger CEO out in the Grid. He's in red so he's technically a program at this point but who knows what they'll make of that. Maybe his company's process doesn't turn the light blue when they go in that direction. Maybe he's a program now. Maybe he's a hybrid of some kind. There's that odd identity disk that was waiting for him.

I saw it in the fake IMAX and the sound was way too loud. I'm not talking "I'm old and the sound was too loud". I'm saying it was flat out too loud. Hopefully they'll mix it better for the digital releases because the contrast between the music/effects and dialogue was atrocious. I guess they wanted to make sure that everyone knew there was new NIN music to be had.

The Jared Leto bashing is a bit overdone, imo. Pretty much any good looking action hero actor could have stepped into his jumpsuit and done the role. Given the material it's not like they could have done worse. For everyone bashing him for his performance they're not giving enough bashing to the writing and directing that created the role. It was a joint effort to make him that forgettable.

There is an after credit scene where it's Jared Leto in all his beard goodness riding a Ducati somewhere in the world. He'd sent a postcard to the Encom CEO saying he's working on finding himself. No one asks how he's funding his world adventures or how he can travel outside the country (implied by location) without a passport or any identification of any kind, unless it's also implied that he's got networking skillz to make fake stuff.

I like the Tron movie. I like Tron: Legacy. I'm disappointed in Tron: Ares and hope that someone can smack people around enough to either make a smaller movie the next time around or stretch it out into the multiple episodes and do justice to the Tron universe itself.

I don't plan on seeing the movie again. It's best seen in IMAX and I just can't stand the idea of sitting through that noise again. Seeing it in the digital format means losing out on the big screen, with the potential of badly mixed sound on fewer speakers. It wasn't compelling enough for me to risk it.