I've seen a bunch of movies this summer, but have chosen not to review them up to now. Consider this a catch up on some of the more recent films out right now.
This is the End
"R" rated comedies are not usually high on my list of must sees, but I took a chance on this one. I rarely walk into the theater knowing nothing about the movie being screened, but there wasn't anything else out that week, so I figured I'd take the chance.
Bad move.
The premise and set up were actually intriguing. The main actors, among Hollywood's Young Turk comedians and thespians, all play themselves, or at least play parodies of their public image. They're self absorbed, stoner elitists living in their insulated pleasure domed ivory towers. Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel go to a party at John Franco's new house, along with a host of other young stars like Emma Watson, Michael Cera and Rhianna, all engaging in the excesses associated with show business types on their time off, when, you guessed it, the Rapture/Apocalypse happens. Actually, so far so good. But then, after a completely over the top sequence in which most of Hollywood's young stars are not simply "left behind," but gruesomely swallowed into the fires of Hell (again, I'm not into gore, but the movie still had me) the film settles into what seemed like an interminable middle section where six survivors try to figure out what happened and how they are going to survive. It never goes anywhere interesting, and begins to feel claustrophobic and self referential, like, as some other critics have observed, this was some big inside joke that only they a few other peeps in the biz are in on (in fairness, this was not the majority opinion; This is the End was very well received by critics).
I would chalk this up as a missed opportunity, because the beginning, as I said, sets things up nicely, and the end, which goes inexplicably feel good in some ways (though still a bit bloody), wasn't that bad. But the entire middle was a muddle of hit and mainly miss gags that left me bored. There was an opportunity to comment of religion, race relations, the objectification of women and the various anxieties effecting twenty and thirty-something men, but it never really does, or does so in the most superficial ways imaginable.
I've read and seen reviews (after I saw this mess) trying to explain the deeper meaning that Rogen and Seth Goldberg (writers and first time directors) were trying to say about male friendships and fame versus reality, but I didn't see it. I admit that this is at least in part a generational issue (I'm just too old for this kind of stuff), but I think that it's more than that. Yes, there is gore (this is meant as a "horror-comedy"), plenty of profanity and humor of the sexual and scatological variety, but who cares? Just because you repeat a "dirty" word or phrase a bunch of times doesn't make it funny. You may not have always agreed with Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor or George Carlin (I certainly didn't), but the profanity that they used wasn't the point. It was meant to get your attention so you would hear what they were really trying to say. And no matter where you landed on the issues being explored, you couldn't deny that they were very funny men. I know that this was meant as a bit of self parody and all, but maybe these guys really don't have as much to say as they think. Maybe they are a bit more self absorbed than they want to admit.
Man of Steel
Now that Batman was been revamped for the screen it's time for the Superman legend to get it's day in the multiplexes. The bottom line: this wasn't a terrible movie, but it simply wasn't all that compelling, either. And all the Christ symbolism was laid on mighty thick. I thought telling the story in a non linear style was good, and how they brought Clark Kent / Superman and Lois Lane together was inventive (though they sort of conflated the Lois and Jimmy Olson characters together, which seemed odd). Superman is unbreakable, but not un-bendable, and he does have to exert great effort to accomplish some of his more spectacular feats, which was refreshing. Again, I didn't hate it, I just wasn't sure how necessary it was.
I'm having a hard time thinking of things to say about Man of Steel (I saw it about two weeks ago) not so much because of the time laps but because it was such a vanilla experience. Fr. Barron gave an interesting commentary on it, so I'll leave him to say the rest.
The Lone Ranger
Back when I was a kid there was an attempt to bring the Lone Ranger legend to screen by way of a big budget spectacle, and it flopped epically. From the reviews and box office receipts of this latest attempt, from the same people who brought us the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, this concept must be cursed to failure.
In spite of the title, this time out the "Faithful Indian Guide" Tonto is actually the main character of the story (actor Johnny Depp gets top billing to drive the point home). Borrowing heavily from the 1970 Dustin Hoffman film Little Big Man, the story is told in flashback by Tonto as an old man in 1933 San Francisco. There are other thefts from that earlier film, including one of its most famous lines, but in the end it's irrelevant. They could have taken the best ideas from every western of the last seventy years and it wouldn't have saved this thing.
In the spirit of the aforementioned This is the End, they started with a good idea but this time, instead of going no where with it, director Gore Verbinski moves things along briskly, though the wrong direction. The angle here is that The Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) is an amiable dunce. He's an earnest lawyer going west to bring law and order but is totally clueless. He and Tonto form a reluctant partnership, which Tonto is constantly trying to wiggle out of after saving Kemosabe's skin time and time again. The movie is full of humorous moments, which is great, but these are juxtaposed by truly gruesome scenarios. For me the two things just didn't mix. I think if they had stuck with the Lone Ranger as well meaning dimwit motif, made this a smaller movie; more like a straight satire, it could have worked. But, without a doubt, they want to make a series out of this, so that was never going to happen. We get hearts getting torn out (and eaten), decapitations and terrorized children. It's PG-13, so there is no gore to speak of, and the most extreme violence happens off screen, but it still makes for a very heavy experience that weighs down the whimsical movie trying to get out.
Ken Burns: Prohibition
Ken Burns has reached a point in his career where I think that he is blissfully incapable of making a bad documentary. 2011's Prohibition, directed with Lynn Novick, is not ground breaking like The Civil War or Baseball, but it doesn't need to be. His style is familiar, true, but he has a way penetrating a story and making distant history and the people who made it seem contemporary, giving us an empathy with the players, not just a knowledge of dates and events. We come to understand better why things happened the way they did, not simply that they did.
In the case of Prohibition he uses the first of its three parts to trace the history of alcohol use and of the temperance movement in the United States, going back to colonial times. While the clear conclusion of the series is that Prohibition was a great mistake, we understand that the problems of alcoholism and how drinking habits had evolved in the States over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries lead to real problems and legitimate concerns among the public. Those in the temperance movement were not simply moralistic busy bodies, but were often victims of the ravages of alcoholism and saw the need to do something about it.
Where things go off the rails, for Burns, is when the temperance movement very early on changes from a movement seeking people's voluntary abstinence from strong drink to one pushing for the total ban on its manufacture and sale. In the end the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that made the manufacture and sale of alcohol a crime, and the Volstead Act that detailed it's enforcement, were simply unenforceable. Rather than alleviating the problems of alcoholism and crime both were exacerbated.
A theme that is repeated again and again throughout the series by the various interviewees as to why prohibition failed is that "you can't regulate morality." There is something true to this, but something incredibly false as well. All laws are somehow a reflection of the moral code of the people, if not of God. It's not a question of if we regulate morality, but rather how we regulate it. As was pointed out in the movie, it was harder to get a drink after the repeal of the 18th Amendment than it was during prohibition. Milton Friedman (not featured in the film) once told the story that he went to a former speakeasy with a friend the day the law changed in 1933 for a drink and were informed that they couldn't serve alcohol because they hadn't been issued a liquor license yet. With regulation, as opposed to an outright ban, governments can control and manipulate better the actions of the people. And we should not kid ourselves, moral persuasion is a tool used by authorities to get their point across.
Smoking, for instance, has dramatically decreased in the last fifty years, yes because we know more about the heath risks involved, but also because of the heavy taxes levied on tobacco products. There are also laws restricting where a person may smoke, with some municipalities mulling laws prohibiting smoking even in private residences. The government has also used public service campaigns that present smoking as wrong. Scientific and medical evidence may be used to make the case, but these are not cold appeals to logic, but very deliberate framing of the issue in moral terms. A message is being sent; smokers are outside, literally and figuratively, the mainstream of social behavior and the practice must be stopped.
I have no love for cigarettes, and don't smoke, myself. I'm all for ending smoking. I'm just pointing out that by framing the issue in moral terms, conditioning the behavior and attitudes of the people and slowly regulating the industry out of existence, the government has been more successful in it's attempts to end smoking than it would have by an all out ban. That is the real lesson of Prohibition.
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