Hannah (2011)

     I don't know what to make of director Joe Wright's Hanna (2011).  It is part hard-edge espionage thriller, part standard action fare, and part tweener (or maybe young adult) yarn about friendship and family.  It also calls upon established stars Cate Blanchett (as CIA maven Marissa Wiegler) and Eric Bana (as Hanna's father, Erik Heller) to adopt over-the-top accents for no real reason.  That is not to say that it is poorly made or unenjoyable.  Hanna is fine, but it probably could have been better if it had been more determined as to how it wanted to tell its story.
     I will say that Saoirse Ronan (Hanna) has the creepiest, most expressive blue eyes I have seen in recent cinema.  There is something otherworldly about them.  As such, they help sell the notion that Hanna is some government concocted being, not an ordinary human being.  Add in the odd education her "father" gives her in the remote, snowy woods of Finland, and Hanna may as well be an alien in human form set out amongst the people to complete her secret mission.
     Hanna works best when the government pursuit of their renegade assets gives way to the interactions between a vacationing British family and not-quite-properly adapted Hanna.  These scenes are lighter – almost breezy – but retain the hint of danger and suspense.  More than that, they show off the contrast between people who grow up as part of a society and those who can only mimic as much.  Unfortunately, these scenes are likely not what one is expecting from Hanna. 
     Blanchett and Bana are fine here, but their roles could have been easily handled by a number of mid-grade actors.  The history between Marissa and Erik isn't given enough weight in its presentation – and where it is shown, it strikes a harsh contrast against the lighter, comic scenes – and the resolution of it is most unsatisfactory.  There is a nice call back to end the film, but that, too, stands in contrast to how the story had been developing.
     I wouldn't steer anyone away from seeing Hanna – it is entertaining, if inconsistent.  But I would warn them to not expect it to be gritty or serious.  It is a bit of fantasy, a (perhaps ill-conceived) parable about the power of women who are coming of age and the risks of the adult world they must enter that throws a little government conspiracy into the mix. 

Dreamers (Original Text - Part Eleven) (1997)

     When I get around to rewriting this story (and I mean thoroughly rewriting it), I hope to avoid hammering a term into the readers heads like I unintentionally did here with "the group".  Can't be that lazy in my writing.  Fine for a first draft to get the idea out there (and all I really have is the rough draft), but it doesn't help if one wants their work to feel complete.
     Anyway, another incredibly short section. 

XI

     Nancy didn't like not getting together with the group, especially when it was everyone.  Still, she decided to follow through on her decision to explore a relationship with a man she knew and respected.  He wasn't from the group.  He probably wouldn't have much interest in the group.  It would be a shame to lose him because of the group.  Besides, Nancy could keep who she wanted from the group.  In the long run, she could deal with most of them being out of her life.
     Jason MacLeod was almost part of that subset.  He would have been if he wasn't going out with Melissa.  Nancy's discoveries about his sexual tastes, and the subsequent conversations they had engaged in had been enough to make her question the friendship he and she shared.  Well, that wasn't entirely true.  They were still friends, and they would probably stay friends for quite a while.  Nancy could, in Jason's terms, afford such a friendship.  She wasn't bound by work or school constraints.  She came from a family with less money than Vicki's, but unlike Vicki, Nancy wasn't encouraged to work.  Her parents liked giving her money.
     Not everybody was like that.  Not everybody was privileged or damned, and maybe more information should be had before she rushed to judgment on Jason.  He was, supposedly, in a faithful and satisfying relationship with Melissa.  He He had come so close to telling Melissa he loved her the night before.  There was a chance that he had said it at some point when Nancy was out of ear shot.  But he had spent the night on the couch, and Melissa slept in Jason's bedroom with Nancy.  It was a good thing because Nancy felt disoriented all night, and Nancy had something Jason was reluctant to call Night Terrors.
     Nancy wasn't out with the group, so she couldn't talk to anyone in it about how she was feeling.  She didn't want to draw her new interest into their ways, at least not as it stood.  Worst of all, she still wanted to know what had gotten her all rattled.  She instead decided to patiently wait for her man.  The patience helped.

Red State (2011)

     Kevin Smith's Red State (2011) stands as a near perfect example of how not to tell a story in film.  From its awkward imposed monologues to insert expository material to its inconsistent, schizophrenic emotional tone, to its thorough lack of any point or entertainment value as a whole, this movie is an unabashed disaster.  That is not to say that there have not been worse movies made, but I seriously doubt the directors of those have been as smug or self-satisfied as Smith seems to be with his own work.  If I were more generous, I could point out that Smith could have broken this into three separate films – each of which would have allowed for traditional storytelling or plot structure – and been better off for it.  His attempt to mash the disparate elements together comes off as amateurish and unimpressive; he should definitely be beyond the first by now.
     The sole bright point of the movie was the character of Cheyenne (Kerry Bishé), who has some depth and meaning beyond the leaden sermons and grindhouse style action sequences.  That writer-director Smith does not know what to do with the character – with any of the characters – may prove that Smith just isn't fit to be making films at this point.  Bishé stands out against the more established actors in being able to depict internal conflict without being obvious or dropping into caricature.  That may just be the writing, or Smith may have just decided that there only needed to be one role that really made the idea of conflicted loyalties and obligations well.  (I don't want to rag on Michael Angarano, an actor I usually enjoy, but he is not given enough to do – and what his character is allowed to do is often poorly shot – and his character feels thoroughly false.)
     There are many bad things I could write about this film, but what's the point?  It has the one bright spot.  Think of it as the cupcake in the pile of shit.  No matter how much you like cupcakes – and if you aren't starving – you aren't going for the one steeped in manure.  There isn't any social commentary here (though I'm sure Smith thinks there is).  It isn't the "actor's catnip" he thinks it is – who would want to be a part of something like this? – and it isn't going to matter in the space of a year.  All Red State did for me was convince me that Smith has no voice past Clerks II (2006).

Stake Land (2010)

     Sure, the impetus behind calling the film Stake Land (2010) seems to be to cash in on the success Zombieland (2009); the awkward announcement of a vampire-ridden America as "Stake Land" feels not so much self-aware as aware of the zombie-themed flick.  Stake Land also fails to explain how Mister (Nick Damici, who also co-wrote the script) knows so much about the various types of vamps while the general population breaks down rather easily into victims, huddled masses, and cultists.  But even with its flawed storytelling – and seeming to borrow from Kevin Costner's The Postman (1997) – the movie is rather enjoyable.
     The story is straight forward, with a few complications along the way to draw it out.  There are the vampires – and everybody should be afraid of them.  There are people trying to survive – they are very afraid of the vampires, and often their victims.  There are a few hunters – Mister being the one featured in the movie – who are unwilling to wait out the end of the world in quite desperation.  Then there are the religious crazies – claiming a brand of Christianity that has the vampire plague as God's means of cleansing the Earth for the True Believers and what I presumed to be their New Jerusalem – and they are the real bad guys.  They are the ones who take the situation from 'oh, this is bad' to 'well, the President's dead and all of the cities have been infected'. 
     It may help to think of Stake Land as a road movie with lots of dangerous, bloodthirsty obstacles.  The buddy-buddy element may play a little false (Connor Paolo's Martin is too slight a character to be any kind of equal to Mister), but there is a believable dynamic between the two main characters.  As one might expect in a horror film, not everyone is in it for the long haul.  But most of the deaths and slayings have a purpose beyond mere horror convention.  The action is a little more comedic than I would have preferred, especially given the more mature themes director and co-writer Jim Mickle is striving to explore, but it is effective.
     Damici plays Mister in a way that makes one think he could be Harvey Keitel's younger brother.  There is menace and sensitivity at the same time, almost all the time.  Paolo keeps Martin emotionally restrained through most the movie – which makes sense given his traumas.  The rest of the cast is serviceable, never overshadowing the leads or drawing away from the immersion in the setting.
     I say give Stake Land a chance if you haven't seen it.  This is the kind of independent horror that comes around too infrequently; we certainly don't see it from the studio films.  It may not be a cinematic classic, but it certainly isn't the dreck that constitutes the majority of horror offerings.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

     Should I admit that I have seen Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde (1995) with Tim Daly and Sean Young multiple times?  Or that my enduring image of Edward Hyde comes from The Impatient Patient (1942), a Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon?  I guess that is my way of saying that while I have been immensely familiar with the idea behind The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) – and I knew the title well enough to have thrown a fit when a contestant on Jeopardy! (1984-present) was credited with a correct answer while leaving "The Strange Case of" off the title – I had never gotten around to reading it.
     Robert Louis Stevenson's novella is rather brief, and it does not disclose much of the activity of Edward Hyde.  Instead, it functions as a precursor to the modern investigative thriller with a lawyer as the protagonist (see the works of John Grisham or Scott Turow).  Stevenson does not escape the device of having a character recount a lengthy story – the final two chapters function in this manner – but he doesn't lean on it like a crutch or drain the suspense away from the tale when using the device.  For the most part (and maybe this isn't surprising to those who have read Stevenson), he writes in something very similar to a modern style.
     However, I did learn that Hyde is almost always misrepresented in film.  Stevenson represents him as a hirsute man of diminished stature and bearing, and younger in appearance as Jekyll had not fed his selfish, malignant character as he had filled his nominally good self with a life well lived.  Movies tend to make Hyde into a gigantic mass of muscle and rampaging destruction.  Stevenson seemed to picture him as a slight, though powerful man with animalistic gait and savagery.  Hyde represented the seed of evil given form, and as such it was necessarily smaller than the whole from which it sprung. 
     I liked this story.  It was far better than the film versions I have seen, though I will freely admit that adapting this faithfully would result in a slow moving, cerebral movie.  Stevenson doesn't quite invest it in the investigation of morality or self-control to which I became accustomed in my philosophy or psychology classes, but I would be wrong to expect it from him.  There is a compelling investigation here, and the threat of what madness (of a sort) can inflict on both the self and others.  Ultimately, I feel stupid for not having read it before now.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

     I think most people look at Planet of the Apes (1968) and see little more than the talking gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans.  It would certainly explain why every film after the first ventures more into the realm of silly science fiction and away from intelligent social commentary.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) tries – very hard, in fact – to honor the legacy of the original film and subsequent important canon.  At the same time, it manages to keep the science as soft as possible and the action supremely PG-13, thus making it clearly identifiable as a popcorn flick.
     One of the things that struck me was how unmemorable most of the human characters were.  Sure, they are important to the story, but I doubt I could have named more than two of the characters after having seen the movie (defaulting to recognizing the actors or the stereotypical role they had been given).  Now, this is largely a problem with my attention to the details of the film, but I feel that if more attention had been paid to crafting the characters I would have been much more invested in them.  As so much of Rise of the Planet of the Apes is centered on the humans, I kind of feel that director Rupart Wyatt dropped the ball here.  For a blockbuster, that isn't a problem – just get to the CGI apes and the havoc they can cause – but given the cult status and social commentary of the original, I was hoping for more.
     I liked most of the CGI (Caesar's pants being a constant source of why? for me) and thought that it did a great job of seeming realistic without ever threatening to look real.  The chimpanzees had a range in looks that seemed to borrow from several films – Jumanji (1995) for Casear, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) for Rocket, and Tim Burton's horrible Planet of the Apes (2001) for Koba – and helped give them character and distinction.  I think I would have enjoyed the action sequences much more were I not so violently pro-human; hey, I've seen the world the apes have and I know how it ends.  I'd rather root for the humans, bad eggs and all.
     I would have liked a more realistic approach to the science in the movie.  I was also supremely disappointed that Dr. Hassline neither appeared nor merited a mention (if there was one, I missed it).  He is such an important figure in the canon of the series that it felt wrong for him not to be included.  On the other hand, there were so many callbacks to the first film (including a very unfortunate lifting of the original's most famous line) that it was clear the writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver were willing to be faithful to that which had come before (something Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman were unwilling to do for 2009's Star Trek).  I think I only found one moment where I was thinking, that's not how it is supposed to happen...well, two if one considers how the movie ends.  Come on, the plague is supposed to hit the pets, people.
     The story's multiple storylines –one concerning the recklessness of human enterprise and the other about Ceasar's recognition of his duty to his tribe – don't exactly blend in seamlessly, but they don't detract from one another.  I feel that there wasn't enough real to root for the humans, but as a fan of the original, I am solidly predisposed to believe that the worst human world is better than the best ape one.  Will Rodman (Franco) is a weak character who endeavors to do good things, including saving the world from Alzheimer's.  Without his father, Charles (John Lithgow), there is no real connective tissue to allow Will to advance the story.  Indeed, Charles and Caesar seemed a much more compelling set of characters and Will the plot device to move them along.  Caesar's own story, escaping the cruelties of the human world, probably deserved its own film, but I doubt that the casual fan would have understood it without a set-up.
     For whatever reason, I didn't feel a need to see this in the theater.  Maybe it was just wariness about how Burton's version had turned out, or maybe the casting of James Franco as the human lead.  It certainly didn't feel like watching it at home robbed it of any scope or majesty.  That is not to say that the movie didn't look good, because it did.  But it didn't try to be grand (and maybe that is a good thing given how grounded the "Apes" movies were in the cinematography).  Maybe that is something best to be saved in whatever final conflict is set between man and ape in a future film.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes may be the third best Apes film – I'd still put it fourth, but I have a soft spot for Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) – and it doesn't feel like an embarrassment.  I am going to count it as a win for honoring the legacy.

Dreamers (Original Text - Part Ten) (1997)

     I actually remember the dream that inspired this section, and suspect that I would even if I hadn't loosely adapted it for fiction.  Not a lot of dreams stick with me for years.  I don't think I did the original justice, nor do I think that I really got the elements I wanted to introduce as an author.  Still not horrible.  Not without problems, either.  I have let a couple of very problematic sentences stand as written in testament to that.
     There was a lot that was supposed to follow from this section, but I think it will have to be in a completely separate story as I can't see it making the cut in the rewritten Dreamers.  The entire angle of J.B. as the wannabe author goes nowhere and shouldn't have been introduced.  But it is there in the original text.

X

     It was a nice house.  The problem was he couldn't remember it being his.  It was Victorian design he thought.  He and his mother lived there.  Maybe.  It looked like the house in the movie "Casper".  It was just J.B. and his mother.  The inside was dusty and vacant.  As he wandered through it, he could not find a single piece of furniture.  No matter which room he ventured into his mother was just within earshot.
     It was a gloomy, depressing house.  J.B. couldn't have been happier that his friends would soon be over to take him out for the evening.  It felt like late fall or early winter, but there was no snow on the ground.  Cold wind blew dead and crisp brown leaves across the front yard.  The sense of death was scary.  His older brother's old sort-of girlfriend, from the days of high school.
     She was like a shadow lurking in the halls just outside of whatever room J.B. was in.  When they shared the halls, she would shrink back, almost into herself.  From time to time she would actually find herself capable of asking where J.B.'s brother was.
     "Where's Magnus?  When will he be back?"
     J.B.'s older brother, Magnus Bradley Binghampton, never went by Magnus.  Their grandparents called him Gus.  He himself went by Brad, but this girl always thought she was closer to him because she called him by his God given name.  J.B. himself always had trouble dealing with that.  Just as much as he did with calling her "Debbie".  He remembered it because she was blonde and the older brother wasn't all that into blondes, so each one stood out.
     "I don't know when he'll be back," J.B. snapped when she asked the question three times in a row.  He didn't think that the older brother actually lived in this house.  It didn't feel like it.  There was a certain air that he would have lent to the structure, and it wasn't there.  How fitting that he had managed to leave his high school baggage behind him, and tragic that J.B. was stuck with it.
     J.B. was off towards the front door before the eerie doorbell even rang.  He knew it would be a flock of friends, males and females, that imagined sense of belonging without attachment that could only be fostered in high school.  It was like a movie from the Seventies depicting the Fifties or early Sixties.  It wasn't real, but since it happened, it had to be considered real.
     He couldn't even remember the first six people who came through the door.  The seventh he remembered because he lost his virginity to her, but he couldn't put a name to the face.  That was probably just as well.  His closer friends were toward the back.  He saw some faces that seemed out of place, but they were good friends.  Just as Larry Pudenski was coming through the vast double doors everything seemed alright.
     "I didn't expect you to bring a small army."
     A strong gust of wind blew one of the heavy doors off its hinges. J.B. caught hold of the handle as it was blown inside the house.  He barely managed to keep his feet on the ground.
     "I certainly didn't expect that to happen."
     J.B. and Larry managed to put the door back in place, and everyone quickly had their fill of the house.  J.B. announced to his mother, who was in the house, somewhere, that they would all be leaving.  The entourage had already gone outside and most were standing by or leaning up against Larry Pudenski's ugly orange truck.  The only thing missing was for about a quarter of the guys to be wearing letterman's jackets.  That would have made it perfectly high school.
     Outside with them was Debbie.  She was next to what looked like a metal bike rack, but there was no reason for one to be at the house.  She was dressed well for the cold weather.  She had a loose knit hat and a scarf to go with he dull synthetic coat.  Her face was red from the cold and the wind.  She was a ghost to the group.
     "Where's Magnus?"
     "I don't know where he is."
     "When will he be back."
     J.B. made his way over to where she was standing so that the conversation was between just the two of them.  No one else was paying attention, but it was wise to use good form.  This close he could tell she had been crying.  She shivered with the cold.
     "I don't think he's coming back."  J.B. paused to let her take in that statement.  "You know, he's probably off with Chloe.  The girl he's in love with."
     "Oh."  She looked as though she had never even considered that to be a possibility.
     "Yeah, so you probably shouldn't wait for him," J.B. offered.
     "Oh," she said again, her face blank.  Then it filled with emotion.  "But I love him so much, I can't imagine him not wanting to see me.  Where is he?"  She went on and on.  In short order her words became little more than a cry with different tones.
     She fell into J.B.'s arms as he reached out to her.
     "Listen, —"
     But she just kept crying.
     "You'll be fine."  He gave her shoulder a squeeze.  She stopped crying.
     "Thanks, J.B.," she said.  She stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek.
     He responded by quickly kissing her.  At first he only kissed her lower lip.  It was an odd sensation, but she didn't resist.  He kissed her again and got it right this time.  It was passionate in its trappings, but driven by nothing.  She felt warm in his arms.
     "Oh, J.B., I love you so much, ..."  She gave the same list had just given for his brother.

     *     *     *     *     *     *    

     Now awake, J.B. was torn between calling his brother and telling him about the dream, or using it as the launching point for his latest story.  He chose the latter.  His brother could read about it later.  J.B. had an awful of habit on not following through on things.  He dropped out of Med School in the sixth week.  He had no trouble making it as an EMT.  It was a shorter, safe route.

     J.B. fancied himself as being the next James Joyce.  He purposely copied Joyce's style because it was the one he admired most.  So long as there were praises to be sung for Joyece, there had to be so echoes to be passed along to J.B.