Movie Review: Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Two and Half Stars out of Five

PG13

Cage: Tom Cruise

Rita: Emily Blunt

Director: Doug Limon

Writer: Christopher McQuarrie

Cinematography Director:  Dion Beebe

Editing: James Herbert and Laura Jennings

If you think a combination of Groundhog Day (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997) starring Tom Cruise is a good idea, then Edge of Tomorrow may be your movie. Using the implicit permission that every science fiction movie gets, Edge of Tomorrow pushes reality and logic to the limit by reliving a particular day during a losing conflict between Earth’s army and bunch of murderous aliens. The Earth having been invaded by the asteroid-borne aliens is then subjected to time manipulation during the ensuing warfare. As could be imagined, Tom Cruise as Cage and Emily Blunt as Rita, members of Earth’s defense force, the UDF, fight the aliens for a while, suffer a few setbacks and then (spoiler alert) win the day – who could have predicted it?

In a mildly comic manner, Cage is initially a cowardly, marketing professional conscripted to the war effort. When he declines a front line assignment, he finds himself via the actions of a vengeful general instead in the thick of battle as a trooper fighting the invaders. Through luck and plot demands, he survives on the field of battle longer than his more-experienced comrades. Cage eventually has a life-changing encounter with one of the aliens, but loses his life in the process; this is when the Groundhog Dog day allusion takes over. Cage re-awakes at the beginning of the day on which he has been killed. This plot line is repeated multiple times with Cage learning more about the aliens and how to fight them with each cycle. He attracts the attention of a heroine from a previous battle, Rita. She and a disgraced scientist, Dr. Carter (Noah Taylor) explain their theories about the aliens, her previous experience with the “Groundhog Effect” and how they need Cage with his active Groundhog abilities to defeat the aliens.

The movie is full of logical and scientific impossibilities, but it does have a few story-telling techniques that I thought were noteworthy. The most difficult aspect of such a story is keeping the audience engaged as the movie-makers repeat the battle day in question endlessly to emphasize the Groundhog effect, to indicate the maturation effects it has on Cage, and to do so without boring the audience to death with too much repetition. It goes without saying that the cowardly Cage, the Marketing executive evolves into an incredible killing machine. However, it is interesting to watch how Cruise handles what are essentially two different personalities; it requires good acting, writing, and editing skills to make this transition believable in an otherwise unbelievable story. There is little other character definition, let alone development.

The editing in such a movie is a considerable challenge, and the team of James Herbert and Laura Jennings have done a good job stitching the story together in a (semi-)plausible, but more to the point, understandable manner. Another technical aspect of this movie that is noteworthy is sound and sound editing. In a movie where the amount of bullets and rockets fired (btw where did the aliens get their weaponry?) must have set a tonnage record, getting the sound effects and the editing to work would also be a considerable challenge. The last big technical part of this movie is special effects; they were frankly disappointing in my opinion. The CGI aliens moved so fast to emphasize their fighting potency, they are virtually nothing more than blurs; the frequent use of dark lighting does not help.

In any event, in the mode of the aforementioned Starship Troopers, or Battleship (2012), or hundreds of pulp fiction movies from the 50’s to the present, Edge of Tomorrow offers very little more entertainment than your standard afternoon B movie matinee. Given so many intelligently written, directed and acted action movies available in 2014, I would skip Edge of Tomorrow.

Book Review: Les Miserables

Les Misérables (1862)

Four Stars out of Five

Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is surely one of the longest novels yet written, and yet quite possibly one of the most compassionate ever as well. It is regarded by many as one of the best novels ever written, and is often assigned in advanced high school literature classes.  It has been done by Hollywood as a dramatic movie and as a musical adaption from the stage. Indeed, the musical is one of the best movies I have ever seen.

It is hard for me to believe that almost any adolescent with their limited experience to the cruelties perpetrated by Man on his fellow would take the same message away from this novel that a more aged (and perhaps more cynical) reader would take. The novel takes the form of five “volumes” each with multiple “books” and “chapters” to tell the story of Jean Val Jean. His story is a tragic rag to riches story on the surface, but more importantly is a story of his redemption. Redemption not so much from the crimes he has committed, but rather from the self-centered, self-pitying world view he carries in his early life to a more compassionate, Christian view at the end of his life.

This book is about the plagues visited upon Val Jean by society, by his personal tormentor, Javert, and by his own personal demons. In moving the plot forward (at let’s say, a very sedate pace), Hugo introduces the reader to slices of French history in the early 19^th century, to that era’s customs with respect to dress and manners, to its criminal justice system and its effects on the convicted, and in painstaking detail to the practices of a particular catholic order of nuns, to the French sewer system, the battle of Waterloo and likely several other areas of French life that my mind has blanked out. To say these digressions slowed the novel without adding much to it would be something of an understatement. Some fraction of these digressions would have been useful, but M. Hugo really needed an editor.

What the book does well is describe how the nature of French society (and Hugo goes to great pains elsewhere to say all societies, not just French) has created systems to work to enrich and empower the already rich and powerful at the expense of the poor. Not a new thought for the early 21^st century, but one that earned Hugo considerable disapprobation from many of his contemporaries when the book was published; perhaps more so in France than in other countries. It is enlightening and depressing both to see how unjustly the poor were treated in that early 19^th century setting, and then to realize how the same forces in play then are still in play now. Perhaps, those in power these days use different tools to suppress, but their end goals remain bitterly the same: Me first.

The plot of the story tells of Val Jean’s incarceration for nearly twenty years for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving sister’s family (and for his various attempts to escape). After being released, Val Jean still in the grip of his felonious nature (one surely created and added to while incarcerated) has a life changing meeting with a local bishop of unusually high empathy. He is forced to confront his demons, his set of values, and his relationship to God and Man. It takes him while to make this step from miscreant to saint. He commits at least one more pointless act of thievery, and this time at the expense of another member of the Les Misérables. Indeed, this last act of brutish venality seems in some ways to be the needed final life lesson of those started by the bishop that propels Val Jean onto his road to salvation. He starts to use both his mind and heart to help others. He becomes wealthy and influential under the first of several assumed names. During this phase, Val Jean (now M. Madeline) meets another member of the Les Misérables that has been grievously mistreated, Fantine. He himself has even played a small unconscious role in her descent into misery. Realizing this plus employing his newfound compassion, he attempts to help Fantine and later her equally unfortunate daughter, Cosette. Following Fantine’s death, Val Jean raises Cosette to adulthood in Paris. During these phases, Val Jean is pursued by the dogged Inspector Javert. The Javert scenes help to establish Javert’s goals and narrow vision for society; he is a better model for one of society’s well trained dogs. He thinks he thinks, but in reality, he only reacts in a manner taught to him by his masters. There is precious little humanity left in Javert. However, it should be noted, he too is one of the Les Misérables; just a well-trained and well fed one.

In time, Val Jean must make a decision for Cosette’s happiness that comes at the cost of his own. In fact, Val Jean had to some degree been living a problem-free life since his days as M. Madeline. Yes, he had several narrow scrapes with Javert and some periods of near poverty (e.g. his time in the nunnery as a groundskeeper). But until he had to choose to let Cosette go to her lover, Marius, he really never had any real personal investment in his new life as caring and loving man; one devoted to others rather than himself. His new-found transformation to a compassionate Christian was never really tested. The testing and Marius’ own limitations lead to Val Jean’s ultimate salvation; he is truly redeemed by the book’s end. Marius and Cosette achieve a kind of new understanding and love for the finally revealed, true Jean Val Jean. Even poor Javert once forced to admit his world view was fatally flawed by the actions of Val Jean achieved a kind of cleansing transformation.  Not only is Val Jean finally and truly redeemed, but by his actions he has led to much growth in the characters of many of those near him.

However, as compelling a story as Val Jean’s story is, the real story, the real felon in this book is Society. Who will help it achieve and how will society ever achieve its redemption? When will Society or better yet Man really learn to place his neighbor’s welfare before his own? Is such a transformation, such a societal redemption even possible? Can Man and his Society at least get better if not, in fact transform? Such a question has long been asked by writers and philosophers. I sure hope so, but based on current life in the 21^st Century, I can only worry for my grandchildren.

Movie Review: Interstellar Review Number Two

Interstellar (2014)

Four and half Stars out of Five

Cooper: Matthew McConaughey

Brand: Anne Hathaway

Murph: Jessica Chastain

Director/Writer: Christopher Nolan

Writer: Jonathan Nolan

Cinematography Director:  Hoyte Van Hoytema

Music: Hans Zimmer

Even though I found Christopher Nolan’s movie Interstellar compelling enough to be on my short list for Best Movie of 2014, and even though this is science fiction with inevitable logic and science gaps, there were several technical questions and couple of logic questions that bothered me enough to prevent me from giving this movie five stars. I thought I would follow up my first review with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek review of these gaps.

Starting with the sound editing, it is nearly impossible to hear the dialog on multiple occasions due to the soaring musical score by Hans Zimmer. Nolan has stated this was intentional, but it seems very counter-intuitive to me to write a dialog, have your actors act it, and then drown the sound out with music.

From a logic standpoint there are several gaps in the story: first up is the unlikelihood of Murph’s room remaining untouched for thirty years while she is off working for NASA (at site only a few driving hours away); convenient to propel the story, but pretty unlikely. Even more unlikely is that after Coop finds the secret NASA site, is subjected to a pointless interrogation regarding how he found the site, he is then lauded within minutes of his interrogation as the only one that can lead the mission. Really? If that is true, why on Earth wasn’t NASA searching for him? And by the way, why is an Indian drone flying around American corn fields and why is Coop so easily able to take control of it, and why is this series of scenes even in the movie; to prove to us Coop is an engineer? If so, why does he spend the rest of the movie acting like Captain Kirk and not Mr. Spock?

Now, onto my real gripes: the technical missteps. Why does it take the Endurance two years to fly from Earth to Saturn, but (apparently) a far shorter time frame to fly from Planet 1 in the new galaxy to Planet 2? And while we’re on the new planets, are there supposed to be twelve of them in a single stellar system orbiting a single sun and all in orbit about Gargantua, the black hole? I get that maybe only three are good enough to check out, but are we to believe that NASA thought originally there were twelve potential Earth-like planets in a single stellar system, and that they did not know there was a nearby black hole there, but they did know there were potentially twelve good planets? This really begs the imagination. And by the way, didn’t Endurance use all of its fuel escaping the black hole; how does it brake to enter into orbit around Planet 3 so that young Brand can land and hook up finally with her old boyfriend?

With respect to the physics, I will admit I am a chemist, not a physicist and that this movie had a renowned physicist, Kip Thorne advising them. That being said, why does Coop’s ranger spaceship disintegrate as he crosses or nears the event horizon of the black hole, but his suit and his body remain remarkably intact? If the gravity well that Planet 1 has is so high as to have a seven year to one hour time dilation effect, why is the gravity only 1.3X that of Earth?

But the two killer problems, the two that wipe all the above small complaints out are the following: the blight would suffer its own growth rate control from negative feedback as its host plants disappear and as it converts the oxygen into nitrogen (that’s a new metabolic pathway, btw); and two, how do the super, multi-dimensional beings of the far future who only exist because of the events involving Murp and Coop manage to create their tesseract used by Coop to bring about their future without creating an unbridgeable time paradox? That is to say, Coop could not have communicated with Murp without the tesseract, having the tesseract allowed Murp to save humanity, having saved humanity the multi-dimensional beings are allowed to evolve from humanity, and thus create a tesseract for Coop; this is a paradox. Unless….

Okay, now I feel better. I did actually love this movie, really.

Please write with your gripes or correct my mistakes, if you think I am wrong.

Movie Review: Interstellar

Interstellar (2014)

Four and half Stars out of Five

Cooper: Matthew McConaughey

Brand: Anne Hathaway

Murph: Jessica Chastain

Director/Writer: Christopher Nolan

Writer: Jonathan Nolan

Cinematography Director:  Hoyte Van Hoytema

Music: Hans Zimmer

Christopher Nolan has consistently shown himself willing to take on difficult-to-tell stories (the reverse time flow of Memento is a good example). As the director and co-writer with his younger brother, Jonathan, Nolan has found with Interstellar an incredibly challenging story to tell. If one focuses on the science and time sequence issues, the story might be as confusing as 2001: A Space Odyssey. On the other hand, if one instead focuses on the father/daughter tale, it is a wonderfully emotional story than anyone can follow and appreciate.

The story is of a future Earth (with oddly contemporary trucks and cars) where a “blight” is systematically destroying the Earth’s food crops and converting the atmosphere to an oxygen-free version of today’s air. We are introduced to Cooper played by Matthew McConaughey and his immediate family, which includes a pre-adolescent daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy). These early scenes are often oddly comic in dialog but deeply sinister in foreshadowing. Borrowing sequences from Ken Burns’ documentary on the American dust-bowl, the viewer is shown that the Earth and her inhabitants have no future in this second dust-bowl.

Through a largely unbelievable story line Cooper is engaged by NASA to pilot a vessel to Saturn, enter a worm hole and venture out to three prospective new worlds where Humankind might begin again. There are logical inconsistencies in setting this stage, and the physics (despite being advised by Cal Tech’s Kip Thorne) require on several occasions much from the viewer, but then this is fiction, science fiction, and one must make allowances for this kind of tale.

The stage is a fantastic one, but like television’s The Walking Dead, the viewer is allowed to take in situations and people on this stage that are completely believable in this context and to take part in several scenes of overwhelming emotional intensity. This has always been for me the hallmark, even the raison d’etre for good speculative fiction, whether of a scientific or fantasy nature. That is to say create a stage where the story-teller can give the audience a tale that will involve them emotionally and inform them intellectually; and ideally tell such emotions and ideas that simply cannot be told without that fantastic stage.

The Nolan’s in Interstellar have created a story that makes intimate and completely requisite use of time dilation, of Einstein/Hawking attempts at a theory of everything (and of course, they get one – hey, it’s Hollywood), and to involve the audience in the effects of the former, and the necessity of the latter to save Mankind. Such a fantastic stage this is. And yet, because of the time dilation effects of immense gravity near a black hole, we are treated to a story of life-long love between a father and a daughter that simply cannot be told in any other way.

The acting by McConaughey and Chastain as the adult Murph are as in last year’s Texas Buyer’s Club for McConaughey and 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty for Chastain are easily Oscar-worthy performances. Indeed, this movie is filled with superb acting: John Lithgow as Coop’s father-in-law, Michael Caine as Brand’s father, Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway as fellow astronauts. But for me the highlight scene involved McConaughey reacting to a message from home – it was almost too painful to watch for its intensity.

Another great aspect of using the science fiction stage was the incredible special effects depicting the worm hole and black hole (though I must say, some of the space ship exterior scenes seemed oddly of a lower caliber). The editing near the end of the movie and the music score by Hans Zimmer throughout were of very high quality. The use in particular of an absence of sound for various space scenes to help give a feel for space versus the soaring music for other scenes of great emotional intensity were often spectacular.

I loved this movie and wanted so badly to give it five stars, but alas the science and logical inconsistencies won’t let me. But I did love this film and want everyone to see it. I’ll write elsewhere of the problematic parts that keep occurring to me after walking out of the theater.

TV: Top Ten TV Dramas

Top Ten TV Dramas

1. Breaking Bad
2. The Wire
3. The Walking Dead
4. Deadwood
5. Mad Men
6. House of Cards
7. Dexter
8. Game of Thrones
9. Sopranos
10. Sons of Anarchy

Each person's Top Ten for any given year for any given entertainment genre is going to be pretty subjective. If you open the discussion up beyond a single year, it is going to get very subjective. Be that as it may, here is my list for Top Ten TV dramas.

As I review the first five in my list above, I feel you could make a very strong case that TV writing and directing is in the middle of a new Golden Age. The acting is not always up to the same very high level as the writing, but it is often of a very high caliber.

I'll start off by grouping Sons of Anarchy at number ten and Sopranos at number nine since to my point of view they are quite nearly the same story: a family of sociopaths running an organized crime organization. Weirdly though, the viewer is drawn into the lives of the characters. Both have very well imaged roles that despite their flaws (and they are legend), you still find yourself rooting for them. I give number nine to the Sopranos for their use of music and the final scene of the series - I get  it, that I may be the only person on the planet that liked it.

Game of Thrones captures my number 8 slot. This is a currently running series that comes from a remarkably long series of books still being written. I give the program's creators points for trying to capture such a complicated story (which if you have not yet read all the books, let me tell you, only gets more complicated). But this is the program's flaw too - too many story lines for TV or a movie.

Dexter as my choice for number seven is something of a guilty pleasure. Like with my choice for number one below, my training as a chemist allowed me some special interest in the job done by Dexter as a forensics specialist hiding a secret. Season four was far and away the best season with John Lithgow as Trinity, though season three with Jimmy Smits was good too. The final episode's final scene was simply brilliant writing and directing.

House of Cards is number six: Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright star in this Washington DC political drama about a merciless congressman. It has very entertaining Machiavellian story lines that stretch its attachments to reality. It is worth watching if only to see how DC might actually run.

Mad Men in position number five is just about the only non-violent drama on my list (sorry for my proclivities), but like the following drama this program has some of the best acting: Jon Hamm and Elizabeth Moss are the standouts, but frankly are part of a very talented ensemble. This story about an early sixties ad company and America in the post-Eisenhower era rings particularly true for those of us of a certain age.

David Milch's Deadwood captures position four, and in contrast to most of the others on my list, this three-year long series has the best acting as compared to my other Top Ten. Starring Timothy Olyphant and Ian McShane we watch a very vicious Old West tale. Some top notch writing helped create the characters so well portrayed by Olyphant and McShane.

Position number three is held very firmly by The Walking Dead (currently running in season five). The writing and season-long story arcs can be of varied levels of quality, and the various scenes of violence with or without zombies can definitely be a challenge for the faint of heart. But what makes this program so powerful in my view is the remarkable way the writers (primarily Charlie Adlard) have asked the question: what would any given individual do when faced with overwhelming horror and desperation? One could argue this story line might be a Holocaust parable.

I was torn in deciding between my choices for number 2 and number 1. I have for a long time regarded David Simon's "The Wire" as the best written TV drama. This seven-year series was so tautly written and so clued into the daily tragedies taking place on the streets of Baltimore that I was convinced it could not be upstaged. The series tails off in relevance and impact near it's end, and for that reason, my choice for number one is the following.

My choice for number one is likely on almost everyone's list for Top Ten, if not for the position of number one: Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan's series of chemistry teacher Walter White gone bad (ok, as a chemist, I'm a little biased here) displays the very best writing and cinematography of all my Top Ten List. And as I note above, the writing bar is set very high (see The Wire). The six year-long series portray's in vivid detail and unsparing grimness how one man's good intentions paved the pathway to Hell for himself, many other criminally-inclined, and a large number of innocent bystanders. Lastly, the closing scene of Walter White laying with his one true love is amazing.

Movie Review: All Is Lost

All is Lost (2013)

Four Stars out of Five

Our Man: Robert Redford

Director/Writer: J.C. Chandler

Cinematography Director:  Frank G. DeMarco

In Robert Redford’s portrayal of a man (“Our Man” according to the credits) lost at sea, we are given the opportunity to view one of America’s best actors; not just one of the best from the late 20^th century, but one of the 21^st century as well.

The movie tells of the struggle made by a sailor crossing the Indian Ocean alone in his sail boat. Why he’s alone, who he’s speaking to at the beginning of the story, where’s he going, we are never told. One of the pleasures of this movie is that by the end of the movie, we are quite convinced that we need not know.

Following a thoughtful and somewhat sorrowful apologia made by Redford (under less than clear imagery to the viewer), the movie moves back eight days as the Redford character awakes one morning on his boat. He is wet and getting wetter. His boat has rammed a derelict shipping container and now is taking on water. This first phase of the events that will unfold allow the viewer to watch the calm stoicism with which  Redford assesses his situation and then methodically ranks the problems assailing him and moves to solve them.

These early scenes are done with virtually no monolog and yet with Redford’s physical movements and his facial expressions, we are able to get a good look into this man’s nature, if not his heart. We do gain a partial view into his heart with his opening monolog and more so later as he slowly realizes that his experience and calm may not prove adequate to his situation.

A very big part of the beauty and greatness of this movie comes from the combined directing and writing skills of J.C. Chandler. The camera moves from outside views of the ship in peril, of approaching external storms to the near claustrophobic interior shots of the ship; most especially telling are the scenes that portray Redford’s dawning realization of his peril, his internal storms. High marks should be given to Frank DeMarco for his cinematographic direction as he portrays these scenes and one very telling sequence from below sea level at the movie’s end.

Is “Our Man’s” story a tale of human survival and perseverance, a story of a single man’s (or Man’s) isolation in a cold and uncaring universe, or maybe a religious parable (consider the final scene and compare it to a particularly famous scene in the Sistine Chapel)? Are we merely watching one competent and singular individual fighting for his survival or is this an argument on either a secular or religious level for the necessity of community?

Like the “Life of Pi” and many others, this story can be viewed and valued on multiple levels. It was, I believe one of the Ten Best for 2013, and possibly one of Redford’s Top 3 performances.