The cast getting Mooned.

…and we thought ARMAGEDDON was devoid of science.

MOONFALL is Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster– I mean, disaster movie. This movie has less science in it than THE CORE. And THE CORE has NO science in it.

The Moon de-orbits toward Earth, and only a conspiracy theorist can save the day! Thanks for giving conspiracy asshats a platform, Roland!

John Bradley is the conspiracy nut, KC, whose wildest theories about the Moon being a megastructure built by aliens are proven true, as he garbles his nonsense at astronauts Brian (Patrick Wilson) and Jo (Halle Berry), who apparently are the only two astronauts who can perform this mission – even though Brian was dishonorably discharged from NASA and Jo is a NASA director! See, now that’s how you write Drama, kids – send people who are damaged and unqualified to do your technical tasks.

The nutcase plot continues, as a renegade A.I. within the Moon has disrupted its orbital trajectory, and must be stopped by doing something-something McGuffin bomb switch. So Brian, Jo and KC Nutjob commission an old, disused Space Shuttle and fly up there (because you can do that in times of Moon de-orbits).

Okay, let’s accept the hollow Moon (which is a Dyson Sphere built around a white dwarf star—which is a physics impossibility within a body the size of the Moon, but I said we’d accept it, so let’s move on with our suspension of disbelief hanging by a cat-hair) – but then story elements don’t make sense even within the established rules of the movie: for example, the renegade A.I. (which is simply one of those overdone CGI ‘bot swarms) is drawn to electronics and tech equipment, so Brian smashes the McGuffin switch with which they were going to blow it up, to stop the A.I. swarm from tracking them… but what about the spaceship they’re in that is FILLED WITH ELECTRONICS?! Later, that McGuffin bomb switch is just fully reconstructed and functioning again, with no threat of the A.I. following them because – we’re on page 85 of the script and need to wrap this in 5. No one fixed it. It was just there ready to go. Fixed presumably by some GOOD Moon Aliens. And then these Good Moon Aliens fix the astronauts’ malfunctioning ship. And that’s another thing–

When their only form of transport is destroyed, the three astronauts are ostensibly stranded inside the Moon forever. But they don’t seem all that broken up. And soon their ship is simply magicked back into perfect shape by the Good Moon Aliens. Which begs the question: Why can’t the Good Moonies simply magick the bad A.I. off their megastructure? Too much to ask of magic who cares fuck you?

Just one scene tells us all we need to know about the stellar level of STUPID displayed by co-writer/director Emmerich, once again, going against the very rules he cites. Someone at NASA mentions the Moon’s shrinking orbit will soon be at the Roche Limit, which is the minimum distance a satellite can approach its primary body before being torn apart by tidal forces. They state the limit as 17,000 kilometers (Dr. Becky Smethurst actually works out the math to prove this is an incorrect distance, but let’s say it’s correct for the sake of this argument). Then the Moon starts scraping the tops of skyscrapers – well within 17,000 kilometers, wouldn’t you say? – and retains its spherical shape, not affected in the least by the physics forces of the Roche Limit that should be tearing it into a ring of rocks around Earth (like Saturn). Which proves they only cited Roche because it sounded science-y, not because they knew what it was. Like George Lucas making Han say, “It made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs” not having the slightest idea what a parsec is.

And if the Moon is so close it’s grabbing up schoolkids and buses and lakes, it should just SLAM into Earth at that point, gravitationally drawn to the Earth-Moon barycenter (the center of mass that both bodies are orbiting, a point in the Earth-Moon system that is inside the Earth). Nope. Just children holding onto lampposts to avoid being lifted off the ground like the surrounding semi-trailers and cows. I think Roland Emmerich has confused the Moon with a twister.

When KC sacrifices his life to blow up the renegade A.I. not only are we pummeled with a “christian” ending (where he meets his dead mother and they start their new “life” housekeeping the Moon), but the Moon also floats back up into space, like some kind of helium balloon. Does ANYONE on this production, which obviously has no Science Advisor, have the slightest clue on the staggering amount of energy required to drive the Moon back into its original orbit? Nothing short of a star exploding on the Earth’s surface would give the Moon the required escape velocity… Einstein spinning in his grave after giving us E=mc2, only to have it spat in his face with horrific, bloated, ignoramus pigslop like MOONFALL.

The human interest stories are cringe-able – featuring Charlie Plummer, Michael Peña and Donald Sutherland, to name a few of the actors Roland conned into this movie – the equivalent of watching humans run between Godzilla’s feet as he battles another daikaiju. Inconsequential to two planetary bodies on a collision course, yet, like the idiotic practice of astrology, or the pseudo-science ravings of conspiracy nutjobs, the filmmakers try to con we viewers into believing that planetary orbits actually DO revolve around the insect destinies of humans after all.

Soundtrack is by Thomas Wanker. Yup, that’s about right.

END

The Pitt Stuff.

In AD ASTRA, Brad Pitt flexes all his other muscles.

Brad Pitt saves the world (like WORLD WAR Z) while pondering the meaning of existence (like Tyler Durden), in transit from the Moon to Neptune (like we didn’t already know Brad Pitt was a heavenly body).

AD ASTRA (“To The Stars”) turns an astronaut’s mission to save the Earth into a man’s search for his creator – no, not “God,” you idiots! – his father, while asking the big questions about Life, the Universe and Everything.

Roy McBride (Pitt) is such a gifted astronaut, his heart rate never rises above 80, even whilst plummeting from a space station in low Earth orbit after an explosion rattles him loose on his EVA. This opening scene establishes two things: one, the calmness of the lead character, with his measured breaths in the atmosphere suit as debris races him to the ground at terminal velocity, and two, the special effects muscle that AD ASTRA wields in an almost cavalier manner.

The same force that caused the destruction of the space station is raining down electromagnetic havoc around the world. Detecting the source from Neptune’s orbit, SpaceCom suspects Roy’s father Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones) as the cause: Clifford turned “to the stars” for intelligent life and the promise of progress, and abandoned the Earth, for which he held only derision; now his contempt manifests itself as EMPs originating from his last coordinates. Roy is sent on a savior mission – to save his father from dementia or to save the Earth by stopping his father. “My dad sacrificed himself for the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. I was 16 when he left, 29 when he disappeared.” (To see the resemblance between Brad and Tommy, look no further than Pitt’s other movie this year, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, where his face is as runneled as Tommy’s!)

Has Neptune ever been the focus of an astronomy-based movie before? Like a silent heroine peeking from behind Jupiter in her corner of the Solar System, radiant in all her azure glory—ah, now we know why they sent Brad Pitt…

Suddenly – Donald Sutherland! Nice to see he’s still healthy enough to make the trip to the Moon—Are we sure this isn’t a sequel to SPACE COWBOYS? I mean, the last time we saw Donald and Tommy, they were lassoing a Russian space station, and Tommy was riding that bucking nuclear bronco to the Moon. Maybe he didn’t stop there…

The look of a man who forgot to take his pills this morning.

The Moon here is a vacation hotspot. Roy narrates in his calm, dejected drone, how Clifford might have disdained the Moon colony as a tourist farce, “If my dad could see this now, he’d tear it all down!”

Car chase on the moon! We know it’s a device to get the Millennials wet (and we’re not exactly sure who is after Roy, or why, or the feasibility of firing laser guns at each other in this grounded science fiction thriller), but we have to admit, the astonishing cinematography (by Hoyte Van Hoytema – INTERSTELLAR, DUNKIRK), the physics in this low-gravity scenario, and the sheer audacity of the sequence, leaves us breathless. And on the Moon, that’s literal!

The seamless CGI in AD ASTRA only enhances our immersion into the story, rather than intrudes for the sake of eye-strain (like any Marvel or TRANSFORMERS debacle). When they turn to look at Earth in the Moon’s sky, or when Roy emerges from the pool under the rocket’s gimbals, or when he is floating above Neptune’s rings, it is subtle yet stunning visual gluttony.

Roy’s emotional state is monitored constantly, his mantra, “I am ready to do the job to the best of my abilities” (much like Andrea Riseborough in OBLIVION reciting, “We are an effective team,” almost like she is trying to convince herself of it).

From the Moon colony, a direct comm line to Neptune, Roy clinically calling on Clifford to respond. After days of nothing, Roy resorts to a heartfelt plea. And SpaceCom fires him: “Your personal connection made you unsuitable.” I thought that was the point – to use Roy’s connection to his father, yet when he actually “connects,” he is discarded.

Like any great democracy/bureaucracy, SpaceCom decides to wipe the slate clean, ordering Roy back to Earth, and targeting a nuke-laden ship to Neptune. Undeterred in his quest for dad, Roy sneaks onboard the Neptune ship.

The technology is not light-speed travel, yet it’s considerably faster than we have now: 19 days to Mars, 79 to Neptune! Roy narrates the zero-G is affecting him mentally and physically – but how can he be going crazy if after 2 months he can retain that sweet 3-day growth?

AD ASTRA plants us so firmly in the astronaut’s seat that it becomes truly terrifying on an existential level. This is not some space “fantasy,” fooling gullible fans into thinking it is based in science (STAR TREK, STAR WARS, STARCRASH) – this is real-world science hitting us in the chest: physics so unbreakable and unforgiving, space so black and remorseless, machines so fragile and futile, it takes all our will not to break down in gloom. So when Roy has to leave the safety of his rocket in a small docking craft, it is brain-glutting horror. Tempered by one of those visual gems this movie wields like chocolate murder cake: with his rocket parked in orbit “above” the plane of Neptune’s thin rings, Roy maneuvers the docking craft through the ring particles to Clifford’s space station “below.” And when he attains his father’s hull, his docking craft accidentally floats away, irretrievable… Again, this movie has planted in our breasts how unforgiving and deathly this environment is, so it is the end of Roy’s world! Roy watches it with that unperturbed heart rate, knowing he is lost – unless he finds his father within…

We are what our parents make us. Roy is so closed off, so unshakeable, so heart-steady because his father had that same something in him that crushed humanity out. To assuage some sort of guilt, or maybe for closure, Roy just needed to hear it from Clifford’s mouth, up here in orbit around the sixth planet: “I didn’t care for you or your mother, and your small ideas…”

wow

The son suffers the sins of the father, “Am I you, being pulled down the same dark hole?” All this time, they’ve been using Roy’s unchanging heart rate as a metaphor for him being emotionless. The redemption for Roy is not in finding his way back to Earth, but in finding that his heart can beat faster…

Written by James Gray and Ethan Gross, and directed by Gray, AD ASTRA is a space movie for adults, controlled, intellectual and thought-provoking. You take your girl to ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD to watch Pitt and his muscles; you watch AD ASTRA alone, to watch Pitt’s acting muscles; his performance so naturalistic and underplaying. He conveys the expansive, crushing, infinite weight of the Cosmos on our insufficient human frames. And when he asks, at the end of his tolerance of life’s charade, “Why go on? Why keep trying?” we feel that truth in our marrow.

And then he “Iron Mans” outa there, making the same physics mistake as THE MARTIAN, ruining an almost perfect movie.

 – – – – S P O I L E R S – – – – –

Thinking he is stranded on Clifford’s dead ship, Roy lightbulbs on the idea to sling himself off Clifford’s rotating radar dish, to be hurled back to his own ship. He uses a metal plate to shield him from the ring particles as he ploughs through them.

Firstly, why did Roy park above the rings? Because he had to drive through ring particles down to Clifford’s ship, and any time you encounter celestial bodies – be they moons or grains of sand – they affect your direction and velocity, and endanger your safety. Now Roy has to hurl himself through the particles to get back. And all orbital mechanics goes out the window, as he aims at his ship as if it was in an atmosphere, then hits so many thousands of particles on the way back, his direction and velocity should have left him head-down ass-up at Uranus.

END

Starving for ideas: Catching Cold.

In THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE, the two models who survived the Hunger Games last year are forced by the Capitol to go on a Tour through the 12 Districts to rub it in everyone’s faces. And our faces too. Then they just repeat the last movie. And rub that in our faces too.

In this first sequel to THE HUNGER GAMES (book series by Suzanne Collins), Jennifer Lawrence returns as Katniss Everdeen, grumpy archer, and Josh Hutcherson reprises his role as Peeta, her ventriloquial dummy (the guy is like Pinocchio, in that his facial expression never changes). Liam Hemsworth completes this vapid non-sex triangle as Katniss’s boyfriend Gale, because in this insipid, unimaginative, pre-teen bankable-franchise environment, the more you resemble TWILIGHT, the more dolls you can sell.

Donald Sutherland is still President of Panem (which is just a future version of America, or a present-day version of Downtown Los Angeles), threatening to kill Katniss’s family if she doesn’t publicly quash the “hope” that she inspired by winning the Games. And there is a new Gamemaker to replace Wes Bentley’s Beard, the great Philip Seymour Hoffman with a name dreamed up by an elf: Plutarch Heavensbee.

The Holy Tour To Quash Hope, instead of quelling the Hope Riots, only exacerbates them. It’s like Ferguson, Missouri out there. So the Capitol schemes up a new twist to drag Katniss back into the Hunger Games to maybe get her killed – a Quarter Quell Hunger Games, where only winners from previous Games compete (kinda like JEOPARDY’s Tournament of Champions, only better, because none of them have to phrase their answer in the form of a question – stupid distracting rule!). Oh, plot device, thou predictable totalitarian mistress!

In honor of the same movie being replayed from the halfway point to the end, the same cast return: Woody Harrelson as The Homeless Guy, Elizabeth Banks as The Joker, Lenny Kravitz as The Hippie, and Stanley Tucci as The Village Idiot. Against the wishes of the pale boyfriend, Katniss now has to smooch that Boy Vagina in public again and smile big with those cheeks that I need to pinch pinch pinch!

New contestants/teen models, featuring alliances with my bride-to-be Jena Malone (SUCKER PUNCH) as Johanna the Axe-Wielding Slut, and Sam Claflin (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES) as Finnick’s Bare Chest. Also: the sedate introspectiveness of Jeffrey Wright (SOURCE CODE), and the drooling kookiness of Amanda Plummer (GIRLFRIEND 2011).

Oh yeah, the irrelevant “catching fire” reference is probably to describe the growing uprising – but maybe it’s simply Katniss’s dress that creates a fire special effect and sends Tucci into a tizzy. I’m guessing the author intended the former and the tweenfans think the latter.

They’ve rewritten the motivations of Katniss, just to create a love-triangle and set little girlies hearts aflutter with her indecision on whose teen meat to cherish. Remember when dull Peeta had a crush on her – and she responded by masturbating his wounds and tonguing him in the cave? And remember how Gale watched all this on widescreen with a lump in his throat instead of his pants? Well, in this movie, Katniss tells Gale that her affair with Peeta “was all an act.” Okaaaay… then halfway through their tour, Peeta whines about being Just Friends and she tells him she can’t live without him.

Don’t TWILIGHT me, bro!

Or how about the night Katniss wakes screaming from a nightmare, Peeta rushes into her room, and she asks him not to leave: “Will you sleep with me?” So Peeta, oh emasculated ladyboy Peeta, clambers in with all his clothes on– Must’ve been written by a woman! Even though they just snuggled, you do realize his erection never went down that night, right? It was a steel bar with its own zip code. Unless you’re an in-denial female, of course…

Katniss tells Finnick’s Bare Chest, “I’m an open book. Everybody seems to know my secrets before I know them myself.” Uh, yeah, Jen, about those nudes online…

Gale gets tied to the Whipping Post – any excuse to get his shirt off to impress Katniss.

If it weren’t for the striking performance of Jennifer Lawrence, CATCHING FIRE would hardly blip as a relevant movie.

There’s a grim indictment of our class-struggling society written into the fabric of THE HUNGER GAMES, but it’s framed within this tiresome faux-competition that doesn’t need to exist in a totalitarian government. You see, the Capitol (embodied by smarmy President Sutherland), is so powerful they needn’t fret about the best method of disposing of Katniss and dispelling her anarchic influence. Why is the President even bothering to re-write foolish rules into the Games to try to kill her? Hey, Bond Villain, Just – Kill – Her. If you really think she’ll become a martyr, then run some doctored footage of her killing a few kids or something. Have you seen THE RUNNING MAN? The Capitol is all-powerful, to the point where it can make an excellent actor-director like Stanley Tucci look like a gibbering idiot in a golden wig, and they can’t dispose of one low-class wench? I mean, you’re a totalitarian government – do something totalitarian!

Instead, President whines to Heavensbee like a bitch waiting for a call from her boo. Waah, how do I destroy her? Waah, she’s giving everyone hope because she defied me! Waah, I have innumerable armed guards willing to kill anyone who raises their hands and whistles but I can’t kill Katniss because – merchandising! Waaah!

Heavensbee has also been digesting too many Bond movies, as all his plots drag out Katniss’s demise by “letting her live” so that, uh, so that, uh… Well, we have two options: do we believe the President is falling for Heavensbee’s outrageously procrastinating plans because the President is stupid, or because the writers (Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt) think we are stupid enough to believe the President could be that stupid? (Of course, we discover Heavensbee has his own agenda, so maybe it could be construed that he charms the President into heeding him? …Nah, the writers think we’re stupid.)

Willow Shields as Katniss’s sister, Prim, gets her moment to shine in a beefed up role, playing staid nurse while her family crumbles around her. Still, Lawrence blazes brighter than anyone else in the conviction stakes, closely followed by the insouciant bum stylings of Harrelson. Seymour Hoffman is also without fault – like Gary Oldman, brings his A-game to even the schmaltziest turd-burgers. Everyone else is phoning it in, or probably just skyping it with those awesome gubmint cameras that can see every frickin thing from every frickin angle.

I still don’t get how the game controllers can see Everything from Whatever Angle They Bloody Well Want. We get no foreshadowing or knowledge of cameras in the forest, hidden or otherwise, no satellites, not even a simple bullshit explanation, like the complete Games dome being outfitted with cameras in every shingle. We can accept there are hidden cameras in a totalitarian government’s death trap – but how do these cameras focus on so many angles? Heavensbee asks for a closeup and not only do the controllers push in on the scene, they flip to four different angles, two of which can only be achieved by a Steadicam positioned directly underneath the lead actor’s ballsac! How much do you want me to suspend my disbelief, assholes?! Also, these controllers can never seem to keep their control room doors closed; more than once, Katniss walks by a door ajar and peeks in on something illicit before they look back and see her, then slam the door in her face. (You mean “physically looking back at the door” is their failsafe mechanism for ensuring no one is discovering their secrets? So they have cameras that can see through a person’s scrotum but no automatic door closers?) And where does she keep getting all those arrows? She empties her quiver on the baboons – the next scene, it’s full again! What the–? These lazy filmmaking methods friction my irritation so much that I can’t empathize with the film’s relevant messages.

Director Francis Lawrence chose the lazy route because – TWILIGHT. Even in this respect, he breaks from convention by making the woman the most powerful of the love triangle, rather than the annoying waif. The story also raises the very current issue of a boy-girl romance overshadowing – or at least, distracting from – life-death issues; broadcast a love story, no matter how corny, and people will forget they are being enslaved. It’s happening RIGHT NOW. (TMZ exists alongside Ferguson MO.) All great stuff. Then something stupid happens again – like meeting the “Career” Gamers – and all brave ideas are washed away. It’s not as if these “Careers” volunteer every year – they’ve been as unethically forced into their fates as Katniss and Puta; why are they called “Career Gamers” and why are they painted as baddies? And why don’t they have any body hair?

Pointless. That much smooth naked skin, I feel like I’m watching internet porn… Hmm, here’s a nice picture of Katniss…

END

The mysterious connection between hunger and prettiness…

The Dum-ber Games.

THE HUNGER GAMES gets caught up being a kid’s actioner with a hot chick, even though it originates as a grim commentary about class warfare. With a hot chick.

It’s the dystopian future. (Sheesh! Either it’s ‘apocalyptic’ or ‘dystopian’ – isn’t there ever a boring samo-samo future in mankind’s future?) And the ruling classes tyrannize the underclasses to the point where the underclass willingly sacrifice their children for battle, in order to keep the peace with the overclass. Kinda like, uh, the present, where the large percentage of real life underclass parents surrender their children to the military industrial complex with a smile and a salute in order to keep the peace with the belligerent overclass.

The upper classes say it’s to keep the enemy (whoever that is) at bay, but it’s really to keep the upper classes entertained. After all, who starts wars? Who needs the military to fight for them? Answer: countries, politicians, i.e. the upper classes.

THE HUNGER GAMES is set somewhere in North America called Panem, made up of 12 Districts and the Capitol. Every year, the Capitol lottery-selects a boy and girl from each District for the Hunger Games, a televised death match pitting them all against each other (a cross between THE RUNNING MAN and BIG BROTHER TEEN MODEL). Parents willingly sacrifice their kids because the Capitol has fooled them into believing that these Games atone for an uprising in the distant past; to keep the peace, to avoid the Capitol’s revenge, they give up their kids for the Capitol’s annual amusement.

From her District 12, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteers for her younger sister, who is chosen. It’s a nice gesture an’ all, but wasted in the way it’s played. We know Jennifer Lawrence is going to take the place of the little nameless girl actor. Big deal. The boy model from District 12 is Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who has a thing for Katniss ever since he threw her some bread in the rain. So romantic.

From the novel by Suzanne Collins, written for the screen by Billy Ray and directed by Gary Ross, movie is an insipid collection of tropes and conventions laid end to end to satisfy the teen market.

Elizabeth Banks is some kind of circus clown who applied her makeup during an LSD trip. Woody Harrelson just crawled out of bed. Lenny Kravitz wanders on set like he’s in between music videos. Who are all these superfluous characters? In trying to be a sprawling epic, many people end up milling aimlessly with nothing to do. I can’t even remember what Toby Jones was doing here.

Wes Bentley tries to out-act his beard. Stanley Tucci in a giddy battle against his hairdo that escaped from BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA. And Donald Sutherland as the grand poobah, tending roses and playing chess with Wes Bentley’s beard.

Bad guy poses of the 21st Century.

I get all the teen models (for the voyeuristic world’s viewing pleasure), but what I don’t get is how we’re seeing them all during the Games. How are they being televised with not one camera on them? On the trees or on the grounds. Shades of THE TRUMAN SHOW as the controllers use fire to push Katniss in their chosen directions. But how are they seeing her? And how do they make those CGI manbearpigs out of thin air? The beasts chase Katniss and we see the actual movie footage in the monitors of the control room. Director Gary Ross is an idiot. How do we see Katniss and Peeta in the cave? Where the filmmakers employ the old Tending The Wound Sensually scene, which is more sexual than healing.

At the auditions, Peeta showed his massive upper body strength by throwing something. No payoff. Katniss makes wood stakes. No payoff. A girl-on-girl fight, but it’s badly directed, by which I mean, no one gets their top torn off. No payoff.

Meanwhile, Katniss’s District boyfriend Liam Hemsworth watches all this sensual action onscreen (transmitted by those invisible cameras), never quite admitting to himself Katniss has kicked him to the curb now that she is out in the world with a fire-skirt and Running From Danger with Peeta the Badass Disguise Artist. (Yeah, that’s one of his skills: using professional-grade film makeup (from God Knows Where) to look like foliage to avoid being bitched by any of the tougher girls.) The Privacy Cams show Peeta and Katniss kissing in the cave and there’s Liam watching every move. He forgot the cardinal rule of action adventure films: if the girl and guy go through a life-threatening situation together – especially if she tends his wounds! – they’re an item!

And just how did putz Peeta ever score the dynamic, independent Katniss? He admitted he had a crush on her on national TV. As with every teen fiction, when someone admits a crush, the person they are crushing on somehow digs them back! Fellas: PURE UNADULTERATED BULLSHIT. The filmmakers try something different in making the woman the more powerful of the couple, but that’s another sociological mistake: her being more powerful gives her even more reason not to succumb to his crush.

Woody’s assessment of the Games nicely matches the sitcom storytelling, “It’s TV.”

We easily see all the devices to keep Katniss heroic: during the Games (where everyone is against everyone else) Katniss helps a young girl, Rue (Amandla Stenberg) survive an attack from the other teen models. Later, Rue is killed by those models. Katniss pays her respect to the invisible cameras and the District goes wild – a distracting action that makes us forget what might have happened had others not killed the girl – Katniss would have had to kill her. Can’t have that! An actual interesting character study might have happened.

Shark jumps proliferate: Over the invisible P.A. system in the forest (presumably on the same circuit as the invisible cameras), the controllers announce that even though the rules say only one person can win the Games, now they’ve changed the rules to two people can team up and win; whoops, sorry, just one person again. Nope, sorry, sorry, make that two people can win – just kidding! We’ll help Katniss with some magic potion that flies down on a fairy floss because – writer says so.

Michael Moore told us in FAHRENHERIT 9/11: “It’s a fight not between countries, but between each country’s ruling class and lower class.” The lower classes will always be fighting for the upper classes. With the rich always in ostentatious, hedonistic luxury, watching detachedly as the poor scrabble for existence. For their entertainment. How the Koch Brothers are laughing at you right now, watching THE HUNGER GAMES as if it’s fiction…

END

Cleanup on Aisle Dirty.

Classic! Explosive, action-packed, funny and filthy, THE DIRTY DOZEN is the best Boy’s Movie of the millennium! If you’re between 14 and 24, you will be inspired by this movie; it was the HALO 3 of its day.

In World War II, twelve American military convicts, each a different flavor of crazy, are snatched from the jaws of death row by a U.S. Army Major, for a suicide mission behind German enemy lines. Salt away in jail – or die free for your country. They all accept, all with the intent to try an escape at their first opportunity, but under the canny tutelage of the Major, slowly become a team. A ragtag team. That word invented here.

Lee Marvin is stoic Major Reisman, willing to bend orders to get his men in shape for the mission; overjoyed when they rebel against him using the collective “we”: ‘We’ don’t wanna shave; ‘we’ want hot water…

Charles Bronson is Wladislaw, a Polish scrapper with a death wish.

Big Jim Brown (“the greatest player in NFL history”) is Jefferson, who does an explosive endgame run that will live in legend long after his football career.

John Cassavetes is wild-eyed Victor Franko, the actual star of this movie, with the most lines and the definitive character arc.

Towering Clint Walker is gentle giant Posey, the “Lenny” who doesn’t know his own strength.

Telly Savalas is religious zealot Maggot, whose distaste for the wiles of women starts the siege on the German stronghold before schedule.

Donald Sutherland is slow-witted Pinkley, whose impersonation of a general would put the buck’s fizz up Robert Ryan’s knickers.

Robert Ryan is a straight-laced colonel who looks down on Major Reisman’s secret mission and his disheveled methods; in trying to prove his veteran soldiers are more effective than Reisman’s “dirty dozen” he is beaten like a red-headed step child.

Ernest Borgnine is a general who gets a big laugh out of Ryan’s knotted knickers.

Familiar face Richard Jaeckal is a sergeant, basically the same role he would play in the other underdog war movie of this decade, THE DEVIL’S BRIGADE (1968). George Kennedy mopes around as an observer.

And there’s Trini López. Whereas half the actual Dozen faded into obscurity in filmdom (besides those major stars covered), López is worthy of mention here only because he was the subject of the hands-down funniest joke in SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, when Tom Hanks complains about women falling into weepy tears over some romcom, then launching into an improvised tearful sonata on a scene from THE DIRTY DOZEN, unable to contain himself when Trini López “busted his neck while they were parachuting down behind Nazi lines… ”

Directed by Robert Aldrich, THE DIRTY DOZEN was made at a time when being in the military was not a giant wank. It was actually cool once. Seeing Bronson and Marvin and Cassavetes in that army green was inspiring. As Pacino might say in DONNIE BRASCO: “These are men are men.” Nowadays, the military brand has overrun the government and even the police force; military are given all manner of respect that they don’t deserve and simultaneously shown disrespect by the very government that utilizes their intimidation role; they’re hung with all manner of useless riot gear, they advertise their services as if they’re gods, we’re all meant to bow down and thank and worship every time their shadow passes over our pathetic non-military selves. As Rachel Maddow observes in her excellent book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (2013), America has become a nation at peace with perpetual war, and with every aspect of civil society accepting the drift towards a military-based society.

So I doubt THE DIRTY DOZEN could be made again with the same efficacy. Movies like the Iraq-based THREE KINGS (1999) and Tarantino’s INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) have tried to recapture that ragtag dynamic of a military team on an adventure, but war is not as breezy a topic as it was; these dynamics have been transferred to fantasy films like THE A-TEAM (2010) and THE AVENGERS (2012), where each protagonist has a different power to offer the team; all trying to recapture that DOZEN flavor and missing the mark (while hitting new ones).

They are the Superman trope in camo. And the Superman trope is simply the Jesus symbology. Is it any coincidence that at their last supper, where they recite their game plan over and over, the Dirty Dozen are seated along one side of the table? Lee Marvin as Christ. With the troublemaker Maggot seated in the position of Doubting Thomas; Charles Bronson seated in the position of The Mechanic, Sutherland is the Body Snatcher, Jim Brown in the position of Running Back and Trini Lopez as Mary Magdalene, the Holy Grail…

END

Conspiracy Clearly.

To sin by silence when we should protest, makes cowards out of men.
–Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

When it comes to 9-11, or John F. Kennedy, or Jesus Christ, no one cares what you think. They know what they know. And no one’s gonna tell ’em otherwise.

Oliver Stone doesn’t care what you think. He directs JFK with the hand of a gunslinger and the eye of a croupier. And you can either accept the fact this truth-seeking movie exists (note I said truth-“seeking” not truth-“ful”), or whine like a petty hyena nibbling around the kill of a feasting lion, because it’s not what you were told to think.

JFK details the deep background behind the assassination of American president John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963, using the Abraham Zapruder film as a starting point. It doesn’t seek to “prove” anything insomuch as “disprove” the Lee Harvey Oswald Lone Gunman Theory. Again, if you are one of the close-minded who wish to accept the bent Warren Commission Report as the “official” truth, keep believing in altruistic government. But even the United States Congress officially admitted there was a “probable conspiracy” surrounding Kennedy’s suspicious murder. A title card tells us a congressional investigation of 1976-79 “recommended the Justice Department investigate further. As of 1991, the department has done nothing. And the files of the House Select Committee on Assassinations are locked away until the year 2029.”

JFK will boil your blood either way. If you believe Oswald killed Kennedy, then this movie will boil your blood because it focuses on a conspiracy that you believe doesn’t exist; if you believe there was/is a conspiracy and coverup, it will boil your blood because the narrative of “Oswald killed Kennedy” still prevails in American culture, and the conspirators are still not revealed or brought to justice.

A mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.
–Joe Pesci as David Ferrie, JFK.

Kevin Costner stars as U.S. attorney Jim Garrison (whose 1988 book On the Trail of the Assassins inspired the movie, along with the book by Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy). Though many people at the time smelled something fishy in the whole operation – not least, the many witnesses in Dealey Plaza whom Garrison interviewed, whose reports differed wildly from the “official” Warren Commission ketchup – Garrison was in a position to do something about it. In an unforeseen irony, by putting the murdered Lee Harvey Oswald under the microscope, studying his character, affiliations, marksmanship and politics, his whereabouts and movements, Garrison and his team discover that Oswald couldn’t possibly have been the lone shooter, let alone fired three bulls eyes in rapid succession (it became doubtful he had even fired a single shot), and was probably what Oswald himself claimed to be – a patsy.

“Hey you guys, the CIA’s staged assassination of the president is on TV tonight!”

Chameleon Gary Oldman is Lee Harvey Oswald, here portrayed as a rudderless communist agitator. Everyone surrounding these two main players in this drama is a familiar face, a recognizable character actor, if not an A- or B-list star: Jack Lemmon, Ed Asner, Michael Rooker, Vincent D’Onofrio, Walter Matthau, Laurie Metcalf, John Candy, Jay O. Sanders, Frank Whaley, Wayne Knight, Kevin Bacon as a rentboy, Sissy Spacek as Garrison’s long-suffering wife, and Brian Doyle-Murray as Jack “Ruby” Rubinstein, Oswald’s killer. (With Oswald’s murder, more questions: Was it a simple revenge killing? Or – before any legal testimony could be coaxed from him – was it a sanction?)

Joe Pesci is David Ferrie, an unbalanced Cuban sympathizer (when is Joe Pesci not unbalanced?), with a wig that just won’t stay straight; Tommy Lee Jones is Clay Shaw, a whacked-out homosexual businessman who, through a circuitous association with Cuban sympathizers, is the only person ever brought to trial for the assassination of Kennedy. A large part of the movie’s dialogue-driven intensity is the Shaw trial, Garrison prosecuting, laying out assassination details step by step. Donald Sutherland makes a covert cameo as a black ops agent who explains the deep background on the government’s and military’s involvement in the assassination, reinforcing our suspicions of the ubiquitous “They.”

As “Mister X,” Sutherland details how events played out that day to a script written by They: Kennedy’s security detail quashed, his motorcade taking an unplanned turn into Dealey Plaza which was not properly secured, the car slowing to 10 mph against protocol, the roof down, the three angles of ambush, his own department sent on a wild goose chase to avoid stepping on the assassination, and so on. In some countries, the “official” versions of the event were made public before they actually happened! A patsy. A setup. A plan falling into place. The lone gunman theory forced into the world media. “They” put forward the Theory and made Oswald fit that theory.

In testimony, Garrison outlines where all the other shots strayed that day, deducing that, “A single bullet now has to account for the remaining seven wounds on Kennedy and Connally [Texas Governor in the front seat of Kennedy’s limo] – but rather than admit to a conspiracy or investigate further, the Warren Commission chose to endorse a theory put forward by an ambitious junior counselor, Arlen Specter; one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people. We’ve come to know it as the Magic Bullet theory.” [Magic Bullet theory: a bullet that turned in midair twice in order to create the entry and exit wounds on the two men.]

Yes, that Arlen Specter (1930-2012). The senator from Pennsylvania. In 1963, he was a Democrat, flipping to Republican in 1965, then flopping back to Democrat in 2009 (because he knew he couldn’t win reelection as a Republican – how’s that for snide, hubristic and arrogant?). Just as Garrison used diagrams and real people to illustrate the path of the “Magic Bullet,” Specter made people sit in various positions to illustrate how one bullet might have somehow done all that damage. Specter died just recently (Oct 2012), which means there was a modern politician who knew guarded secrets about the Kennedy assassination. It is obvious to any rational person that the Magic Bullet theory is a grand illusion, meaning Specter himself knew this, meaning he knew the morbid truth behind the assassination. Did no one think to beat the shit out of this guy to get some answers?

The term “conspiracy theory” has developed into a negative-baggage hammer against anyone who contests the milky, full-of-holes “official” version. (Like the term “grassy knoll” has entered the vernacular as a gag, cited in relation to something not quite kosher.) In the end, the lone gunman has become its own conspiracy theory, because those who endorse it also believe there is an organized group of contras trying to disabuse them of their “faith” in it. But consider these Conspiracy Facts:

“They” ordered the limo full of blood to be cleaned and reconstructed; They ordered the attending doctors not to report correctly on their examinations of Kennedy’s wounds; They superseded all the surgeons’ protocols with military procedures, They spirited away Kennedy’s body before an independent autopsy. Testimony of witnesses was either ignored, edited or destroyed – provided the witnesses themselves did not mysteriously die; arrest records of all the vagrants in the area directly after the shooting went missing… and on it goes. No truth anywhere. None.

Who are “They”? Because there are no answers, everyone is implicated – from the CIA to the FBI, from Cuban sympathizers to the American military and the White House.

During this trial, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. Then Bobby Kennedy. Imagine the tenor of the times – the world was coming apart at the seams. The killers of both men would be claimed as scapegoats to conspiracies, which the film never pursues. It’s too big. Too big to nail. How deep does it all go? We’ll never know. Garrison would later ask his jury, “How many more political murders disguised as suicides, overdose, heart attacks, car crashes….?”

The Zapruder film is its own character here. In essence, JFK is a film made about that film. If it didn’t exist, the Kennedy Assassination would have been an entirely clean sanction.

In carefully staged match-cuts, Stone expands the original grainy footage to take in many angles to give us a more complete perception of the tableau: in Zapruder footage, we see a little girl skipping along next to Kennedy’s limo – cut to closeup of the little girl (Stone’s footage); in Zapruder long shot, a woman waves frantically near the president’s limo – cut to closeup of the woman (Stone’s footage), and so on. It is the most intimate we’ve ever experienced Zapruder, and thus the most disturbing: to see either side of that moment when a human possessed Life and then did not. One minute, he is smiles, expectancy, plans, aches, anxieties, breeze in the hair, memories – the next, Life is gone. Zooming into blurred closeup, we see skull shattering, the infamous “red mist” spoken of by bloodthirsty American sharpshooters, a flap of red skin flying off the head, yet still connected by tissue, the body moving in concert with bullet impacts – sideways, downwards, and then “back and to the left.”

Back and to the left.

Garrison belabors this point for his jury: Back and to the left. Physics. Action-Reaction. When bullets come from different directions, a body will move in reaction to physics laws. Garrison reasons that if there was more than one bullet – and every frame of Zapruder film and resultant reaction points to more than one shooter – then it must by definition be called a conspiracy. That’s all that conspiracy means – more than one person involved.

As his closing argument, and closing the movie, Garrison gives a thunderous Movie Speech; he cajoles, he weeps, he NETWORK‘s, he BRAVEHEART‘s, he Sermon-On-The-Mount‘s… and then does a throwback to the 1950’s “moral tale” movies (when mankind was “tampering in God’s domain”) – he looks directly into the camera and says, “It’s up to you.” The American people. “Do not forget your dying king; show the world this is still a government of the people, for the people, and by the people…” Of course, it falls on the renowned deaf ears of the American people. Garrison, to this date, is the only person to hold a trial in relation to Kennedy’s murder. Clay Shaw was acquitted. It was later revealed he was ex-CIA…

The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.
–attributed to Joseph Goebbels.

Whodunnit? We’ll probably never know. The fact is – it was done. And more than one person was involved. And for that to happen at such a national level, and for the coverup to be so extensive, those involved had to be in positions of unimpeachable authority. Jesus Christ, John F. Kennedy, 9-11. You believe what you want to believe. Next you’ll be telling us the Earth is flat…

END

Hitchcock… Hitch-Not.

Well, two out of three ain’t bad. Two out of three HORRIBLE BOSSES, that is. There’s Kevin Spacey as Boss #1, reprising his role from SWIMMING WITH SHARKS as pure A-Hole; there’s Colin Farrell as Boss #2, creating an eccentric new role for himself as a balding, paunched lunatic. And there’s Jennifer Aniston as Boss #3, supposedly a horrible boss because she’s sexually aggressive towards her male employee – but really! What world are we living in, fellas, where Jennifer Aniston making overt advances on your member is a bad thing?

In this attempt at black comedy, Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day are three wimpy friends who have had enough of their horrible bosses and wish they had the balls to kill them.

Yes, this movie has no balls.

Flailing for solutions, they meet “murder consultant” Motherfucker Jones (Jamie Foxx, doing his best Black Man, even though he’s been white since 2005), who advises them of the STRANGERS ON A TRAIN method: each of them kill the others’ boss, so there will seemingly be no motives.

Hitchcock… Hitch-Not.

For good measure, someone mentions THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN (the 1987 comedy reimagining of Hitchcock’s 1951 STRANGERS). There’s a strange self-referential thing going on here, as Charlie Day notes, “Yeah, that movie with Danny DeVito!” and he’s with DeVito every week in TV’s IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA. (The fingernails-down-a-blackboard prize must surely go to this movie’s casting agency; of the three unbearably annoying guys on SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA, for this movie, they cast the most annoying.)

So Aniston’s character is a hottie because if she was a fat ugly gunt, that would, ironically, be insulting to the fat ugly gunt (“oh, he’s only turning her down because she’s fat and he’s shallow!”). The only way a man can win against this egregiously acceptable double standard is to be hot. Let’s face it, ladies: if a beautiful man (say, Channing Tatum, Ryan Phillipe, Brad Pitt, Bradley Cooper) were harassing you for a date, dropping innuendo or complimenting you excessively in the quest for panty, you wouldn’t have any complaints; it’s only when the Danny DeVitos, Nick Noltes or Herman Cains drop hints that suddenly your panties are sacred and you’re a “victim” of sexual molestation.

Main reason HORRIBLE BOSSES doesn’t work: Hot Women Are Not Funny. And Hot Nympho Women are a notch above Hot Women. What man is going to burst out laughing when he’s busy surreptitiously trying to unzip his pants in the darkness of a movie theater? Laughing would only get him busted. Bateman and Sudeikis have a few funny moments with their bosses, but Charlie Day’s harassment by Aniston gluts the senses of every male who is fantasizing about what he’d do in Day’s position: The things we could do with that flat stomach and black lingerie and banana-gulping mouth… Horrible, just horrible.

Seth Gordon (FOUR CHRISTMASES) directs, from an overwritten script by three writers who should have had a horrible boss to keep them on track.

END

When the cute robots take over the skyways…

The points in his hair are as iconic as Mickey Mouse’s ears; they exist in their own reality, where they are always seen, no matter the angle of his head!

Astro Cuke

It’s ASTRO BOY, Osamu Tezuka’s manga creation from the 1950s. Cartooned in the 1960s in Japan, then re-cartooned in the ’80s (remember those cute cartoons with his big pointy head and bigger eyes, where they couldn’t even synch the “Oouah!” exclamation – over a mouth position that looked like “Oouah!”?); now re-rendered in CG animation – where Astro’s spikes must necessarily migrate from one side of his head to the other in different shots so we can still always see them. (These things affect me; what can I say?)The cartoon was cuter because his head was bigger. Still, ASTRO BOY has a lot of heart; it’s an adult cartoon clothed in tiny metal undies and yeti boots.

Young Brit Freddie Highmore voices the 2009 Astro, speaking with an American accent – but isn’t Astro (aka “Tetsuwan Atomu,” “Iron Arm Atom”) Japanese? He was styled like a 10-year-old boy in the cartoons, but here, Astro is definitely at an older age of latent lust, so that he can tent his metal undies in the direction of tween Cora (voiced by Kristen Bell, whose spinner blondness surely deserves tenting ovations, if it weren’t for Astro being a robot whose man-apparatus, we suspect, is non-existent). Onward…

Like a junior version of FRANKENSTEIN meets PET SEMATARY, Astro starts as a human boy named Toby, who is disintegrated in a lab experiment. Very gruesome. In the throes of despair, Toby’s scientist father, Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage) recreates his son as a robot, implanting all Toby’s memories and breathing life into his creation with an inexplicable “blue energy life force.” Tenma ultimately rejects the robot boy for reminding him of his lost son (uh, I thought that was the idea) in a sad scene, that also raises questions about artificial intelligence.

How do we discern between true emotion and “programmed” emotion? Toby loves Tenma as a father because Tenma programmed Toby that way. Though aren’t we all “programmed” from youth with principles, fears, insecurities, and a love for yeti boots? What is “love” from a child toward its parents except devotion/gratitude for sustenance and protection? But Tenma wants “real love” from the young automaton – whatever that is – not programmed love.

The themes are deep, and rife for endless discussion, over resurrection (for Christies), anatta (for Buddhies), soul transmigration (for Hindies) and katra (for Vulcans).

But to keep it light (for kiddies), light up those yeti boots and let’s punch some evil robots!

Astro lives on Metro City, floating above Earth, the Metro government dumping their garbage on Earth’s surface. After discovering his super powers (flight, super strength, power rays – and butt guns! Now I get it: Ass-tro Boy!), a chase scene leaves Astro stranded and an exile on Earth’s surface, where he meets Cora and her outlaw gang of kids – and a dog-bot named Trashcan who reminds us of R2-D2. As Astro must go through adversity trying to regain his home and father, movie takes on shades of Pinocchio. Ironically, Astro also gets wood for Cora.

Bill Nighy voices big-nosed Dr. Elephun; Eugene Levy is a stooping, flustered butler robot; Nathan Lane is Hamegg, the robot-gladiator pimp, who looks exactly like Nathan Lane.

Matt Lucas (LITTLE BRITAIN) is Sparx, heading a trio of British robots (The Robot Revolutionary Front) who have been watching too much Python. Very interesting that the robots of this world are acquainted with Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.

Donald Sutherland is the evil president of Metro City, whose campaign slogan is, “It’s Not Time For Change” (obviously styled after John Boehner), who is subsumed by the giant evil robot whose life force is the “red energy.” (Get it? Blue, good, democrats; red, evil, Republicans.)

Astro proves his worth as an all-round effeminate nice guy by battling robots and doing good deeds (he even holds up the whole of Metro City, which makes him pretty much as strong as Superman), but this movie’s mettle is revealed when Astro is called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice – and he never flinches – as he goes Shirtless Kirk in his death plunge into the heart of the evil Republican robot. The mark of a true hero, the likes of which senile coward John McCain could never fathom.

Even though everyone treats Astro like a unique creation, his father should have Astro’s master files somewhere, so if Astro “dies” it should not be too much of a task to download another Toby robot. At least, not as hard as getting a Republican to stop lying. And the “blue energy” that makes Astro kind and strong and metrosexual is also merely a matter of technology. (Astro’s sacrifice is diluted if we realize this, so they treat him as a one-off, almost as if he has become a Real Boy at the climax… cough–Pinocchio.)

Movie trips over its feet when Tenma reconciles with Astro at the end, “You may not be Toby, but you’re still my son.” Shouldn’t that be “You may not be my son” (they are not bound in blood) “but you’re still Toby” (Toby’s programs are powering Astro’s processing unit)?

Who’s laughing now, Carlo Collodi?

END

Inhuman Immunodeficiency Virus.

I feel like vomiting and I’m getting a headache and maybe even diarrhea. I’ve either got a virus. Or I’ve just watched the movie of the same name.

But here’s the twist. VIRUS isn’t about some little animalcules that infect your blood and make your nose run. It’s about an alien entity that uses electricity for energy and overruns a Russian science ship, trying to wipe out the invasive disease onboard the ship – Man! A twist almost as meaningless and devoid of scientific credibility as midi-chlorians creating The Force.

A ragtag salvage tugboat crew stumbles upon a deserted Russian vessel in the middle of the ocean, and see an opportunity for millions of dollars in salvage. Donald Sutherland is the tugboat’s slightly mad captain (who seems to be wondering how to be an actor in this movie that does for actors what Watergate did for politics), Jamie Lee Curtis is the big-chested navigator; tug crew include Maori legend Cliff Curtis, wackjob legend Marshall Bell, and acting legend William Baldwin.

They find one human survivor (Joanna Pacula) and a huge machine that constructed itself from wires and steel (and still looks like one of those ultra-muscled supervillains from Marvel Comics, with a “head” design stolen from Jeff Goldblum’s THE FLY) and is trying to kill them. Dull chase movie ensues.

We are tempted to call this anthropomorphized villain a “robot” but technically it is not – the word “robot” is derived from “slave” and denotes forced labor; this thing has a voice like Darth Vader and is no one’s bitch.

Jamie Lee Curtis on the other hand is the demographic’s bitch. Her miscast role is like Hillary Swank’s in THE CORE or Radha Mitchell’s in PITCH BLACK – a hot woman thrown into an all-male crew to keep the 15 to 25-year-olds mildly interested. Yet she never once let’s the 38Ds out for air – so what’s the point? And though the sexual tension is anemic, we would still expect onscreen spittle to fly with the All American Male – Acting Legend William Baldwin – yet the closest they get to lying on top of each other is strapping themselves to a rocket sled and escaping the waste of time the moviemakers call the plot.

END

Due to Sandler’s brilliant performance, Don Cheadle was forced to remove his “I’m With Stupid” t-shirt.

When Sandler’s good, he’s very good. (Did I just say that?)

The words Adam Sandler and Acting don’t fit together well. In Mike Binder‘s drama REIGN OVER ME, they – ulp! – do.

Sandler is Charlie Fineman, an ex-dentist suffering Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after his family died in one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center. He has blocked himself and his mind off from the world. A college dentist friend, Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle) finds Charlie in this mentally and physically bedraggled state, tooling around New York on a motorized scooter, and tries to bring him back to Life.

Other characters orbit around the tentative relationship Alan re-forges with Charlie (Jada Pinkett-Smith as Alan’s wife, Mike Binder as Charlie’s lawyer, Liv Tyler as a psychiatrist, Saffron Burrows as a randy dental patient and contrived love interest, Donald Sutherland as a deliciously imperious judge) – but Sandler The McActor outshines them all! Call the white coats on me if you must…

We can’t take our eyes off him. He is unshaven, disheveled, his mind wanders, his emotions are disjointed, he plays video games while remodeling his kitchen over and over again; he constantly wears headphones, listening to ’70s rock albums, notably Springsteen’s The River and The Who’s Quadrophenia (featuring the song, Love Reign O’er Me – we hear The Who version during the film, Pearl Jam’s version closes the credits); he even shows off his drumming talent. His performance never flags; as pressure builds from his growing orbit of characters to face the past and rejoin society, his resistance is passionate.

There is a point where he tries to commit suicide by pointing an empty gun at a policeman, hoping they would shoot him down. At this point, we might have stepped back and said, “Hey, it’s only Adam Sandler – shoot him and be done with it.” But the misery in his eyes has subsumed the character and taken him way past Sandler into actual Acting.

REIGN OVER ME forces me to realize I don’t “hate” Adam Sandler. He’s a spectacular businessman and a good actor. I just hate the characters he plays onscreen. I hate that most of his movies are wasteful exercises in poorly executed jokes and opprobrious messages, catering to a niche that doesn’t realize it’s too dumb to appreciate his real talent.

Here his real talent is on display. Writer-director Mike Binder (the mind behind THE MIND OF THE MARRIED MAN) may be accused of making Charlie too obviously pitiful, and therefore manipulating us into empathizing with him (after all, a person can have PTSD without invoking 9-11), but the script tiptoes around the “event” so ambiguously (“his family died in a plane crash”), it does not seem like exploitation.

Until Charlie gives his tearful monologue recounting the day of “the accident” – the last angered words to his wife, the undecided kitchen color, his three little girls and the family dog (pouring it on, pouring it on) – delivered with such conviction I can’t imagine a dry eye in the house. Even though we know it’s a stacked deck. Who doesn’t have sympathy for a 9-11 widower? (He even escapes prosecution for threatening the policeman due to that magic Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free date.) But Sandler pulls it off. No maudlin hero talk, no Go USA, no politics; he reins in his performance until he spills the monologue, and when he does, it is heart-wrenching, not for the story – for the acting. Yes, it is manipulative, but ALL movies are manipulative – some just disguise the strings better than others.

REIGN OVER ME asks: How much intrusion into another person’s life is considered socially acceptable to aid their recovery and at what point do the helpers turn into the neurotic ones? Charlie’s in-laws (Robert Klein, Melinda Dillon) take him to court to force him to face the memories of his dead family; to start re-leading a “normal” life. Is facing the grief humane, or is being forced to face it inhumane?

Only a True Actor can portray this profound paradox. Cue – ulp! – Adam Sandler?…

END