Movie and Television Reviews

Bauer is back!

24 started to get away from us a little inseason six when some of the action seemed a little much even for Jack Bauer, but if season 7's opener, Redemption, is any indication, 24 may have glided back down to a more stable altitude.

In Redemption, Jack Bauer is working at an American school in the fictional African country of Sangala when the American ambassador hands Bauer a subpoena for torturing people (Allegedly. Jack wouldn't do that ). Bauer leaves the school and a short time later a coup breaks out in Sengala. The vicious usurping junta, led by a General Juma, recruits adolescent boys for his army and generally terrorizes the population.

Meanwhile, back home, a new female president, Allison Taylor (24 has also had a black president, anticipating Obama by seven years, and a Huckabee look-alike president. That means either Huckabee or Sarah Palin in 2012.) is getting ready to be sworn in as president. The outgoing president, Noah Daniels, doesn't want to intervene in Sengala. We're led to believe that it's because Daniels has something to do with Jonas Hodges, the leader of an organization helping the junta.

The sub-plot involves the son of the president, Roger Taylor, whose friend has access to evidence that may implicate Hodges.

In a scenario reminiscent of the solid movie Tears of the Sun, Bauer returns to help the children. The transition of power occurs in Washington.

Tears of the Sun (Special Edition)

It's a promising start.

I liked the change in locale. We might not see any of the CTU this season. I do hope to at least see Kim, however.

The villains are believable in a 2009 geopolitical context- everybody agrees, because it's not a left-right issue and George Bush didn't take action in any similar situation, that African junta leaders can be bad dudes.

The action and pace are typical 24 which is to say, great.

Politics/Message:

I thought that the ousting of conservative Joel Surnow would mean that in this season 24, Jack Bauer would liberate Buddhist priests form Guantanamo with the help of wrongfully detained taxi cab drivers who dared speak out against Bush's plan to sell Iraq to Exxon and Afghanistan to Columbian drug dealers, but I was wrong; Redemption, at least, is pretty darn conservative, almost traipsing upon Neo-con territory.

For example, the bad president, Daniels, argues that the African country isn't worth American lives because they didn't attack the United States, don't pose any threat the U.S., and have no important assets. Hasn't that been the mainstream anti-war line for five years?

The good president, Taylor, says that it's our duty as a decent country to intervene, and that a failure to act would lead to suffering. Hasn't that been the whole Neo-con spiel since the nineties?

In Redemption, the United States is a good country, even if some individuals aren't. Africans can be bad all on their own without an American pulling the strings. They utter progressive banalities like, "Don't you want to fight the [American] Imperialists."

In the most realistic television portrayal of an organization since the Shriners on Happy Days, the U.N. representative is a weaselly coward.

Not much, but conservatives should be thankful for every cultural crumb thrown our way.

24 - Seasons 1 - 6

Politics/Message:

And, so it goes. Hot on the heals of the Anglican Church, fox hunting, and the House of Lords, James Bond is the latest British institution to fall into the PC abyss. Watch out Queen Elizabeth and pork pie!

So, in 2008, who are the bad guys? Al Qaeda? a resurgent Soviet Union? Darfur-ravaging/oppressive-dictator-propping/organ harvesting China (Too much revenue there, I suppose.)? Myanmar? Hugo Chavez and other freedom-oppressing, crony-socialist Latin nations? Nope, South American totalitarians are the heroes; they're "Marxists who share resources with the people." It's the American CIA.

It's America, really, as the CIA agents aren't rogue. Apparently, we're not liberating oil-producing states from tyranny so that they can sell their oil to whomever they want; we're dividing the world's oil resources between China and ourselves.

Corporations (yawn), the guys we're now spending billions to bail out, are also evil. You know that corporations were behind a coup in Haiti because the Haitian president raised the minimum wage to $1.00 a day, don't you?

Movie:

Q of S' plot is unBond-like and more closely resembles Ferngully or Syriana than Dr. No: The sloppy CIA agent is going along with a coup in Bolivia to get oil and, Quantum, the new SPECTRE, is seeking control over Bolivia's water rights. The Bond girl, Camille Montes, played by Olga Kurylenko, is the protagonist in a revenge subplot.

Bond girl Olga Kurylenko

FernGully - The Last Rainforest (Family Fun Edition)

Syriana (Widescreen Edition)

Dr. No

The whole thing isn't terrible interesting which is a shame because Q of S has some very good elements. Daniel Craig is a fantastic Bond, the Bond whom dedicated fans like myself have been waiting for. Craig is masculine, smooth, and physical in a way we haven't seen since Sean Connery, missing only Connery's sense of humor.

I generally like the serious tone and smarter use of technology as well as the more logical and mature situations and background.

Felix Leiter is in it as well. No Q.

Q of S has some spectacular stunt work- probably the best I've seen- especially the opening chase ending in a church bell tower. Chases and fighting, like chocolate ice cream, always get boring, however, and the third pursuit in the first hour, the boat chase, dilutes the effect of the previous two and subsequent three. Aside from those punctuations of excitement, Q of S is a series of meandering, boring sentences.

Conclusion:

Ian Fleming, Nazi and Communist fighter, and pro-American politically if anti-American culturally is turning over in his grave, and I have one less point of culture that I can tolerate ideologically; I'm left with Stargate, Lords of the Rings, Narnia, and Hannah Montana.

Madagascar 2 is a delight from end to end and one of the few recent cartoons that made me laugh out loud.

I admit to not having seen the original- I think I was in Iraq at the time- but, if you didn't either, you should still be OK for Madagascar 2 as Madagascar 2 thoughtfully gives the audience a sense of the original- a zoo-raised lion, hippopotamus, zebra, and giraffe attempt to leave the New York Zoo for Connecticut, but are captured by zoo authorities. Animal rights activists force zoo officials to send them to Africa, their native habitat, but in the confusion caused by mutineering penguins, wash ashore in Madagascar. Madagascar 2 begins with the quartet and the penguins attempting to flee the island in the remains of what looks like a DC-3.

The introduction also gives us a glimpse at Alex, the lion's, origin. Alex was always a sensitive kid, unlike his alpha-male father, Zuba. One day, hunters took Alex while his father preoccupied himself with his lion duties, fighting off alpha lion pretenders, primarily.

So, imagine the coincidence when Alex and Co. land smack dab in the middle of the childhood preserve. Drama ensues. First, Marty the Zebra has an identity crisis when he realizes that any zebra is pretty much like any other; Gloria the Hippopotamus tries to find love with hippothario Moto Moto ("So nice, you have to say it twice.") only to find that she's attracted to Melman the Giraffe who declares his love for her when his hypochondria kicks in, and he thinks that he has a couple of days to live. The story centers around Alex, however, and he has to prove himself to his father. He doesn't prove himself by fighting, but he does, in the end.

Meanwhile, a Jewish grandmother inspires her fellow New Yorkers to survive in the African jungle after the penguins steal the humans' jeeps. The penguins use the jeep parts to build an airplane, with the help of monkeys' opposable thumbs.

The movie is very funny, operating, as all of these movies do, on separate levels for adults and the kiddies. the humans were funny, and I found the monkeys and penguins especially hilarious. It breaks away from recent child movie tradition by not including any jokes centering on bodily functions.

Message/Politics:

Follow your heart. Alex solves problems his way and his dad accepts him. Alex doesn't have any romantic interest in the story. There is interspecies love between Melman and Gloria. Like the cause du jour in Hollywood, such a pairing cannot result in procreation. "Love overcomes all obstacles." Expect more such subtleness in the future.

Madagascar (Widescreen Edition)

It looks like it's going to be Ryan Gosling- from Canada!

More jobs shipping overland

I approach conservative or religious-themed fiction (Modern only: Anybody's safe with Shakespeare, Mozart, Bach, Dante, etc. Conservative and religious non-fiction is also O.K.) with some trepidation. I've read Catholic fiction like Elijah: An Apocalypse and watched that conservative sketch comedy on Fox. Eh. I don't even try conservative knock offs like Christian heavy metal or fantasy novels. My points are that I didn't have high hopes for An American Carol, and that I would tell you if it's bad.

Father Elijah: An Apocalypse by Michael D. O'Brien

Conservatives need not fear a ninety minute wince-fest, however. An American Carol is the best explicitly conservative movie since...ummm...errr...I don't know, maybe since Why We Fight (Other movies have conservative themes, like the Narnia ones, but they're more universal and less partisan.).

The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Widescreen Edition)

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Three-Disc Collector's Edition) by C. S. Lewis

Why We Fight World War II - The Complete Series

The plot, a Michael Moorish director is visited by three ghosts that teach him that, for the most part, American wars have benefited both the United States and the world, makes sense and is really quite clever.

Almost all of the jokes are legitimately funny, even accounting for the conservative catharsis factor.

For satire to be funny, it has to skewer its victim at an angle. We're familiar with religious satire- ignorant, hypocritical. Conservatives are sex-less, warlike, and uptight.

Zucker has some pretty good takes on his leftist targets here. The ACLU are relentless, destroying zombies. Protesters are naive and spoiled. College professors are America haters nostalgic for their 60s youth. Terrorists are klutzy fanatics, and Michael Moore is a second rate liar-hypocrite who ignores Cuban misery to make his point, doesn't give charity (Joe Biden), and is motivated by his own adolescent amorous failures.

One can object to the one-sidedness of American Carol, but I think it's fair to ignore fairness this once. I can actually find instances of everything Zucker lampoons in American Carol. I can't say the same about the male-raping guards in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay or whatever the heck was going on in Syriana. And, unlike Michael Moore, Mel Gibson, raked over the coals in Zohan, isn't a terrorist-adored liar.

Syriana (Widescreen Edition)

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (Unrated Two-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy) by Ranjit Kumar

You Don't Mess With the Zohan (Unrated Single-Disc Edition)

It's probably a lot less hateful than Religulous.

There's slapstick.

Politics/ Message:

Pro-American, pro-just war, anti-anti. When was the last time you heard a gay joke that didn't position gays as straits' moral, humorous, or stylistic superiors? Certainly, American Carol is the most un-PC movie of all time.

Little kids cuss, which I find unpleasant and unfunny.

One often hears Pixar movies praised for their ability to operate on different levels to entertain multiple demographic groups, or, in other words, for having funny bits for kids and funny bits for adults. Igor also operates on two levels: There are jokes for easily entertained little kids just happy to be outside of the house and looking at animation and jokes for easily entertained adults just happy to be outside of the house and looking at animation.

Igor revolves around two observations, that stereotypical "evil scientists" usually have deformed, abused assistants, and that those assistants are often called "Igor." According to Igor, one can't assume that all igors are subservient idiots: Igors are just as capable of being great scientists as non-deformed people (Igor does nothing to destroy the stereotype that Germans are the "maddest," most "evil" scientists. I guess some stereotypes are still quite useful.).

One of those igors, named Igor, resides in Malaria, a town in perpetual darkness because of the king's evil weather manipulation. When Igor's evil scientist, Dr. Glickenstein, dies, Igor tries to pass off his research at the evil science fair as Dr. Glickenstein's, as nobody would take an igor seriously, right? His creation is the monster, Eva.

Eva is big and ugly, with a grotesque asymmetry about her- one small arm and one big one; it seems to be the Igor animators' favorite uglifying technique. The only problem with Eva is that she's not evil- she's good. Eva's "evil bone" having failed to activate, apparently.

Igor attempts to make Eva evil by subjecting her to a brainwashing session, but things go awry when Eva watches a video of an acting coach instead. Igor then fools Eva into "acting" evil for the science fair in order to win. Rival evil scientist Dr. Schadenfreude tries to lure Eva away in time for the science fair.

Igor not only lacks genius, evil or otherwise, but is devoid of anything approaching clever. Names offer script writers cheap cleverness opportunities. Igor's writers offer such duds as "Malaria" for the town's name and Dr. Schadenfreude. One of the sidekicks, a disembodied brain, is a strait ripoff of Futurama. Potty humor abounds. All of the other jokes are essentially the same: Somebody starts talking calmly and than shouts excitedly: "I would like you to realize one thing, my friend, WE'RE ABOUT TO RUN INTO A HUGE COW!" or something like that.

Futurama, Vol. 1

The plot is briefly interesting when Igor tries to convince Eva that her planned-for rampage is really a part of Annie. It descends from there, however, into brain-dead foolishness and predictable, treacly, unearned sentimentalism.

Annie (Special Anniversary Edition)

Politics/Message:

The movie is disturbingly nihilist. Setting aside the logical, theological, and scientific questions surrounding the "creation" of life, we have a suicidal rabbit who can't die and the "recycling" of igors.

Oddly, the end is almost Christian. The concept of "original sin" rears its orthodox head when Eva declares that "We all have an evil bone, but we can choose not to use it."

The parts designed to appeal to adults are shockingly sexual in nature, the adult equivalent of the bathroom jokes for the kiddies. We have allusions to male endowment and even the animation is sexually suggestive, with visible junk bulges and breasts spilling out of blouses.

For the kids, Igor gives us uncomfortable, un-PC (in a bad way) jokes about blind, fat, and ugly people.

Finally, Igor Igor has some lame Bush-bashing. Reminiscent of the odious 9/11 truther-flick Loose Change, the king manufactures the weather crisis to promote his evil agenda. Igor uses the crudest, most over-used Bush allusion when Dr. schadenfreude says to Igor, "You're either with us or against us," further proof of Igor's originality crisis.

L00SE CHANGE 2ND EDITI0N D0CUMENTARY AB0UT THE SEPTEMBER 11TH C0NSPIRACY THE0RY

Many acting buffs will find the re-teaming of two of America's greatest and most accomplished actors- both of whom became stars within the same series, Godfather (We'll forget about Heat)- too good to pass up and see Righteous Kill for that reason alone.

Now, it's no sure thing that great actors will act well or be well-matched for their role in a given movie. Both Al Pacino and Robert De Niro have had their share of non-shiny performances. Al Pacino does a terrible job in The Recruit and is in the interesting, but gimmicky Simone (S1m0ne). Robert De Niro is great in Stardust, but he parodies himself in Analyze This, a sign of creative tiredness.

They both do well in Righteous Kill. Pacino plays Rooster, a very veteran cop on the NYPD force, in a locker room-police force tough-humorous manner. De Niro is Turk, another veteran. Turk's a little more pensive and philosophical than Rooster- more hidden rage.

The movie starts with a confession by Turk for the murders of criminals who have cheated justice. This would seem to be what script writers don't want to do in a thriller, but it's original and works out OK. The goal of Righteous Kill is to keep us guessing as to whom the real murderer is, and Righteous Kill accomplishes this task- I never lost interest in the movie. I particularly liked the fact that the murderer can be Turk's girlfriend, Carla (Karen Corelli), a possibility made more plausible by her and Turk's preference for S&M style sex.

Having been born in the spring of De Niro and Pacino's careers and not yesterday, I expected some surprises.

The not-quite shockers feel manipulative and cheap, in the end, however. Righteous Kill also descends into cheesy first-person views to disguise the perpetrator, and the ending has one of those cheap black and white with sound-filtered flashbacks that play back the clues from the movie, which, with your plot epiphany, you now see in a whole new light.

Message/Politics:

Similar to Batman: The Dark Knight, actually: Blurring the line between justice and destructive vigilantism.

There's a pedophile priest. I don't mind, as the Church deserves it.

Simone

Heat (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Analyze This / Analyze That (Double Feature)

The Sopranos - Season 6, Part 2

The Godfather DVD Collection (The Godfather/ The Godfather - Part II/ The Godfather - Part III)

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