Magic is Cool

Film: The Prestige
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop

Magic is cool. I say this knowing that there are people who disagree, but they’re also wrong. Magic is cool. I’m not such a huge fan of the giant stage illusions—the big tricks that take 20 minutes to set up for a couple of seconds of wow factor. But a good magic trick is something special. For me, the fun is in trying to figure out the secret of how the trick is really done.

The Prestige is all about magic, and the magic of magic. A period piece, the film occurs in the late 19th century or the early 20th. Two up-and-coming magicians work behind the scenes for another magician named Milton (Ricky Jay, who is an impressive magician in his own right). The assistants are named Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). Both are learning the trade of stagecraft and illusion, and Angier’s wife Julia (Piper Perabo) works as Milton’s assistant.

We learn almost immediately, in fact before we know about Milton, that Borden has presumably killed Angier over some long-running feud. He is in prison and awaiting trial when he is made an interesting offer. In exchange for the secrets to all of his tricks, including the one that made him famous, The Transported Man, his daughter will be taken care of instead of relegated to a workhouse and a terrible life.

We then get the story. Angier and Borden want Milton to do more with his act. In the course of this, Borden ties Julia’s hands too tightly, and she is unable to escape from a water tank. Julia drowns, and the feud between the two men begins. Angier wants to know what knot Borden tied, but Borden refuses to tell him, claiming not to know. Milton is ruined because of the accident, as is the man who creates his tricks, Cutter (Michael Caine).

Borden and Angier start their own acts, and proceed to do everything they can to ruin each other’s success. Angier contracts Cutter to work with him, and comes up with a startling new way to do an old trick. Borden destroys the trick on stage, ruining Angier’s run. Borden attempts the trick of catching a bullet, but makes the mistake of calling Angier on stage, who proceeds to shoot off two of his fingers.

Things get nastier when their women get in the middle of the conflict. On Borden’s side, it is his wife, Sarah (Rebecca Hall). For Angier, it is his new assistant and love interest, Olivia Wenscombe (Scarlett Johansson). Angier sends his assistant to work for Borden, hoping to steal the secret of his new trick, The Transported Man. Sarah, meanwhile, is convinced that her husband has fallen for this new girl and loves her only part of the time, loving both Olivia and his magic and secrets more.

All of this comes from that one trick. In it, Borden bounces a red rubber ball across the stage, then steps into a box on one end of the stage. Then, just as the ball reaches the far end of the stage, he emerges from a second box and catches the ball. Angier becomes obsessed with the trick, hoping to steal the secret, convinced that it must be more complicated than the double that Cutter tells him it is. In fact, Angier does perform the trick with a double for awhile until Borden destroys his reputation once again.

Ultimately, he gets hold of Borden’s diary and decodes it, believing that the key lies in a machine built for Borden by the scientist Nikola Tesla (David Bowie). Tesla agrees to help Angier decides to fund Tesla’s work, working through his intermediary, Alley (Andy Serkis). And we are thus lead back to the beginning with the death of Angier, as he performs the newest version of this same trick, and drowning in front of his greatest rival.

The actual plot here is really a lot more complicated than all of this. In fact, it’s the sort of film that requires a couple of thousand words to go through all of the various twists and turns the plot takes. In that respect, it’s pretty impressive. This film trades on its difficulty, demanding that the audience pay close attention to it at every moment. Miss a minute, miss the movie. And while I respect this, my disappointment in it is palpable, and best covered in a spoiler.

*** POOF! A SPOILER APPEARS! ***

What we discover is two-fold. First, Angier’s trick really is a form of magic. Standing under Tesla’s giant device doesn’t teleport him, but produces an exact duplicate of himself elsewhere, a specific distance away. What this means is that every night, the man in the machine gets dropped into a water tank and is drowned—essentially, one version of Angier dies with each performance. Simultaneously, we discover that Borden’s trick is accomplished by virtue of his identical twin. This twin goes around disguised as Fallon, the man who makes the tricks. In fact, the two of them frequently switch places, spending a day as one personality or the other.

Okay. So I can, for the sake of the movie, buy into the idea that Tesla’s machine makes a clone. But why then is he so surprised to fall into the tank every night? He should know what’s coming. Second, all of Borden’s personal problems stem from the fact that he and his twin switch places every day or so—Sarah ends up killing herself because it was the wrong twin, the twin who didn’t love her, playing the role that night. Even if I accept the whole identical twin thing, who would consent to live that much of a charade? One twin could take the role of Fallon, undisguising himself only for the trick reveal. It sure as hell would have made their lives a lot less complicated.

*** POOF! A SPOILER VANISHES! ***

Ultimately, the problem I have with The Prestige is not that it is unbelievable, but that the parts that are supposed to be believable don’t pass the sniff test. It’s certainly an inventive movie and the plot is complicated and intriguing. However, the characters act in ways that no people would act in that situation. For that, it’s a disappointment.

Why to watch The Prestige: A complicated, difficult plot.
Why not to watch: The resolution, after a couple of minutes of thought, is ludicrous.

Racist Cinema

Film: The Birth of a Nation
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop

There comes a time when one must be willing to separate the art from the subject matter or the art from the artist. It happens, for instance, every time I watch a movie directed by Roman Polanski. Roman Polanski, the alleged statutory rapist must be separated from Roman Polanski, the great filmmaker of Chinatown and Repulsion. It also happens with D. W. Griffith’s first great masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation.

For me, there is no other possible way to watch this film, which is more or less a paean to the glorious days of the South when the lifestyle was fabulous for anyone white. The film yearns for those halcyon days of yore when the rich, white, benevolent plantation owners held sway, and even their slaves were happy in their servitude. Obviously, the connection here to reality is pretty tenuous at best.

And yet, that’s the film we’re given here. The South is praised in all things—the bucolic lifestyle, the traditions, the glory of the plantation system. Northerners in general are shown as slipshod, nasty, and petty while the men of the South are all gallant and noble and the women are all beautiful. Nothing here is more glorious than the flag of the Confederacy, which is covered in glory with each victory for the gallant, brave troops. Abolitionists are no better than…well, whatever you can think of (although Lincoln is thought of pretty well throughout).

And it gets worse. Since the film is based on a book called “The Clansmen,” it should come as no surprise that once the South loses that War of Northern Aggression, all hell really breaks loose in dear old Dixie. See, those terrible, terrible former slaves shouldn’t have really wanted their freedom, because all they’re really going to do is attempt to ravage the pure white women with their terrible, terrible jungle fury. Who can step in to save the day? The Klan, naturally.

Yes, the Klan. In Griffith’s masterpiece, the Klan are the good guys who seek only to avenge the terrible wrongs done to the South when those damned Yankees fought them for wanting to create their own country and for leaving the white population poor and helpless against all those rapacious black folk. It all feels so backwards—it did generally at the time it was made for many, although the film was a hit. But in this day and age, the morality of this film, the overall tenor of it feels so completely backwards and horrifying that the film is often difficult to watch. Anyone not lilywhite is nothing but a terrible, rampaging brute, little more than an animal, as are the white Northern soldiers who lead “Negro” regiments. In a battle early in the film, such a regiment destroys the town of some of the film’s main characters—looting and pillaging, destroying wantonly until the noble Confederacy rides into town to save the day and send those bad, bad men a’runnin’. In one title card, Griffith goes so far as to call the disenfranchisement of non-whites the Southerners’ “Aryan birthright.”

And so, The Birth of a Nation is unquestionably racist in the extreme. Griffith’s title cards throughout want to claim very much that the film is anti-war, and there are certainly sequences (the death of two friends, one a Confederate, the other a Yankee dying together on the battlefield, for example) drive home that point. But the real thrust of the film is that before the American Civil War, the plantation owners and Southern whites were benevolent rulers who held sway over their childlike slaves as a form of kindness. Without this oversight, says the film, the slaves would quickly destroy the land, lord their superior numbers over the white population, and continually exact revenge as well as release their rampant sexual desires for irresistible and pure white women.

Thus, the film must be separated from the art. The film itself, the actual plot and story, the characters and characterizations, the mood, and everything about it is completely reprehensible, particularly from a modern point of view. It is almost (not quite) but almost akin to blaming the Holocaust on the Jewish population of Europe. In this respect, The Birth of a Nation is a hateful, terrible film impossible to view dispassionately.

However, on the artistic side, beyond the story and the inherent racism of the film, it remains that Griffith was a master technician and a true innovator of the cinematic form. Scenes are filmed with a red filter to depict blazes around cities. He was one of the first, if not the first, to use a tracking camera for some shots. Griffith managed to blend documentary features (like the assassination of Lincoln) with a fictional narrative. He used close-up camera work to great effect.

Thus, on the level of historical importance to the growth of the film medium, there are few movies that wield this kind of impact. Griffith effectively created the film medium with this film in profound and significant ways. The film is still being studied for its effect on virtually everything that came after it.

So it’s art. Is it bad art or is it great art? That point is where people are still splitting the dog. Ultimately, which is more important—the invention and use of new and influential techniques in the cinematic medium or the reprehensible, vicious, and racist story it tells? It puts the viewer in the unique position of either denigrating one of the greatest technical achievements in early film or praising something about as politically correct as Mein Kampf.

So where do I fall? It is a great film. It’s an unpleasant, nasty film. It’s a film that will irritate and offend anyone who isn’t a skinhead. But regardless of this, its technical achievements mark it as a film that truly is worthy of study. It’s worth noting, though, that silent dramas are extremely tedious to watch (for me), and this one runs more than three hours.

Why to watch The Birth of a Nation: The most influential film for the first 30+ years of cinematic undertakings.
Why not to watch: Naked, ugly racism from stem to stern.

Judy, Judy, Judy

Film: A Star is Born
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop

Ah, Judy Garland. It is the stock in trade of the entertainment business that such stories happen more than we may like. A person with enormous talent is, in the end, destroyed by that very talent that made him or her a star. This is a theme we will revisit when I watch La Vie en Rose about the life of Edith Piaf. But this is not the film of the day, which is a musical in a very different tradition from the norm. How fitting that the story is one that matches the life of its star in many ways.

A Star is Born features Judy Garland as the supremely unfortunately named Esther Blodgett (changed in the film to Vicki Lester). She’s a talent, as revealed in the first few minutes of the film in a performance on stage at a Hollywood benefit. Her act is nearly destroyed by the drunken entrance of a fading star named Norman Maine (James Mason), but Esther manages to turn this into an entrance that gets him an ovation.

Maine, once a matinee idol, is now a drunken has-been of the (name your own favorite drunken has-been) variety. After Esther saves his bacon, he realizes that his drinking is a problem and he needs to do something about it. He recognizes that Esther has talent and promises her a career in the movies, but loses her address, number and any way to contact her. Esther, having quit her act, is forced to take menial jobs to support herself, singing in commercials when she gets the chance. Much of this (and other parts) is shown in a sepia-toned montage that is surprisingly effective.

It’s in one of these commercials that Norman Maine hears that angelic voice once again, and tracks her down. He convinces his friend Oliver Niles (Charles Bickford) to give her a small role in a film. This changes once Niles hears her sing, and she gets a major role in a musical, which proves to be a whopping success, making her a bona fide star. She marries Maine in celebration.

But this is when tragedy strikes. She wins an Oscar, and a drunken Maine barrels up on stage, speaks wildly, and mistakenly slaps Esther (now Vicki) across the face. Realizing he has a problem, he checks himself into a drunk tank and sweats it out, but hops off the wagon when his former agent (Jack Libby) rides him for surviving on Vicki’s talent. What happens next is best left to spoilers.

*** A SPOILER IS BORN ***

Vicki tells Oliver that she will give up her career to nurse Norman back to health. He overhears the conversation and, realizing that giving up her stage life will kill her emotionally, he walks out into the ocean and drowns himself. Vicki is naturally despondent, but is convinced to return to show business when told that she is wasting the career that Norman died to save. At a gala benefit, not unlike the start of the movie, she introduces herself as “Mrs. Norman Maine” to wild applause.

*** A SPOILER RETIRES AND LIVES IN SECLUSION ***

One of the problems I tend to have with musicals is that they are so ready to push the happy ending on everybody that they strain the limits of believability and reality. A Star is Born does not do that at all. Instead, we get a real story that happens to have musical numbers in it that don’t do the whole “break with reality” thing so common and frustrating in many other musicals. What we get here instead is tragedy, reality, pain, and the angelic voice of Judy Garland.

Frequent readers are probably already tired of my complaining about my distaste for musicals, but it’s a distaste that’s at least honest. A Star is Born doesn’t rank in that list of films I dislike, because it holds together as a story and because the production numbers all make sense in the grand scheme of the film. I liked All That Jazz for the same reason. The musicals I dislike fail for me because they want me to buy into a world that I don’t believe in—a world where people break out into song and perfect choreography—or a world I don’t care about—where everyone is talented, on stage, sassy, and lives happily ever after.

A Star is Born works because the musical numbers, which are the real selling point of any musical, are secondary to the workings of Norman Maine and Esther/Vicki. It doesn’t hurt that I love James Mason (especially as a villain), and it doesn’t hurt that Judy Garland could sing anything handed to her and make it her own.

Is it too long? Probably. The big musical numbers really are big. “Born in a Trunk” goes on for what feels like the first half of the film. This isn’t to say it’s not worth watching, but it is the Energizer Bunny of musical numbers, and thankfully leads into the intermission. At roughly three hours running time, there’s a few places that might stand a trim. However, at that length, there isn’t a ton of fat here, particularly with the sepia montages. As per my penchant, I’d cut from the musical numbers.

Why to watch A Star is Born: Judy Garland at her best.
Why not to watch: This is not a happy musical.

Christ Tangential

Film: Ben-Hur, Life of Brian
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library (Ben-Hur), DVD from personal collection (Brian), both on big ol’ television

If you’re going to tell a story, you may as well tell a big story, and if you can tie it in to an even bigger story, so much the better. The typical Bible epic focuses on the lives of the people in the Bible, either Old Testament or New. There are a few other films that attempt to do the whole “sword and sandals” thing without much of the sword, and without much of the Jesus. As a case in point, we have Ben-Hur and Life of Brian.

Ben-Hur, of course, takes this story and itself quite seriously. The winner of the highest percentage of Academy Awards in history (it won 11 out of the 12 handed out that year), it is perhaps more than any other film objectively great. It tells the story of a wealthy Jewish prince named Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) and his life, which runs tangentially to that of Jesus Christ. In fact, the film opens with the birth of Christ, despite the fact that Jesus is, at best, a tertiary character here, and the actor who portrayed him, Claude Heater in his only film role, never shows his face and is uncredited.

At the beginning of the story, we are introduced to Messala (Stephen Boyd), the new tribune for the Jerusalem garrison. It turns out that he grew up in the area and always dreamed of running this outpost. He is quickly greeted by his old childhood friend, Judah Ben-Hur. However, this reunion soon turns sour. Judah wishes for freedom for his people, and balks when Messala asks him to help him destroyed the Jewish rebellion. This causes no end of trouble between the two. When a loose roof tile slides off Judah’s house, hitting the new governor, Judah is accused of attempted assassination and handed over to the slave galleys while his mother and sister are imprisoned, eventually becoming lepers. We get in the scene of Judah’s sentence, the essence of Messala, who tells Judah that he is condemning him simply because people knew they were friends. If he’s that quick to pass sentence on a friend, the people will fear him.

On the march to his new ship home, Judah is refused water until a mysterious stranger (obviously Jesus, even from the back) helps him. Once on the ship, he survives by hating the Romans. In a crucial battle, he saves the life of the Roman commander, Quintus Arrius (Jack Hawkins), who eventually befriends him and adopts him as a son and Roman citizen.

However, Judah wants revenge on Messala and journies back to Jerusalem. Along the way, he encounters one of the original three wise men, Balthazar (Finaly Currie) and an Arab sheik named Ilderim (Hugh Griffith). Judah agrees to race Ilderim’s chariot in the grand arena against Messala.

This is the real culmination of the film for me. The chariot race is truly something special, and despite the fact that this movie is a good 50 years old, this scene still holds up as one of the greatest ever filmed. The action is intense, particularly between Messala and Judah. Judah, of course, wins the race, and Messala is badly wounded when his chariot wheel flies off and he is trampled under the feet of another team. He dies of these wounds, but not before telling Judah of the fate of his mother and sister, now plagued with leprosy.

After this, the movie becomes quite a bit more moralistic, and dovetails back with the story of Christ. For my money, the film could have ended shortly after the chariot race, but what do I know?

Life of Brian is the second film from the Monty Python team, a comedy group I almost literally grew up with. I’m a huge Python fan—I had a dog named Monty Python, and another named Basil Fawlty. Again, this movie runs parallel to the life of Christ, and is the tale of Brian (Graham Chapman), the baby born in the manger next to Jesus. Brian’s life parallels that of Christ in many ways, including his becoming a prophet and martyrdom on the cross.

The film, which should come as no surprise from anyone even vaguely familiar with the Python team, is a long gag. Brian finds himself in a variety of dangerous situations, all caused by drastic misunderstandings of the people around him. His mother (Terry Jones, also the director and team member) is constantly annoyed with him, and tells him that his father is a Roman named Naughtius Maximus, who raped her, at least at first.

Brian falls for Judith (Sue Jones-Davies), who is a member of the People’s Front of Judea, a radical organization that wishes to overthrow Roman rule, provided they can get anything out of committee. Asked to write “Romans go home” on the palace wall, Brian is caught, given a grammar lecture by a guard (John Cleese), and forced to paint the phrase on the wall 100 times. This, of course, gets him pursued further, causes him to get a ride on a spaceship, be captured, imprisoned by Pontius Pilate (Michael Palin), who has a terrible speech impediment, escape, become a reluctant prophet and messiah, be recaptured, and eventually crucified.

The entire Python team—Chapman, Cleese, Palin, Jones, Eric Idle, and Terry Gilliam (a hell of a director in his own right)—play numerous roles throughout the film, while Python regular Carol Cleveland has just a few bit roles.

There are things missing from this film in a big way. I love Gilliam’s weird little animation sequences, and except for the titles and the completely gratuitous alien spaceship sequence, there is no animation here. Additionally, there is almost too much story here for the Pythons. The Quest for the Holy Grail has a semblance of a story, but it also goes off the rails time and time again, which is where most of the fun comes from. Brian does not—it sticks to its main theme, with the comedy coming from the characters rather than the incomplete sketches and bizarre segues from one thing to the next.

Sadly, I think Brian is the least of the Python films. It’s gutsy and ballsy (coming allegedly from an offhand comment from Eric Idle. When asked what the team’s next film would be, he answered, “Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory”) and ambitious. It’s these qualities that put it on this list, and also make it far less funny than the other Python films. They push it pretty hard. There’s a lot of language and gratuitous male and female frontal nudity, not to mention the mocking of religion, belief, Christianity, Judaism, and just about everything else.

Recently, an American named Kim “Howard” Johnson, who was a Python fan and flew himself to Tunisia to work on the film, published his notes and diary from his time working on the film. It’s a gushing, sometimes fawning account of his five weeks with the team, but it’s also worth a read for any Python fan. I enjoyed the book and I enjoy the movie, but it’s almost never the Python I choose to watch.

Why to watch Ben-Hur: A real epic of the original mode and, of course, the chariot race.
Why not to watch: After the chariots, it turns maudlin.

Why to watch Life of Brian: It’s a Monty Python film.
Why not to watch: Every other Monty Python film is better.

Tricky Dick

Film: All the President’s Men
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television

I’ve made the comment before that it’s sometimes difficult for me to get into a movie based on reality if I know how the real story turned out. Apollo 13, for instance, was a pretty good film, but I knew going in that everybody got back safely. To overcome this, a film really has to be something special. Fortunately, after last night’s debacle with Independence Day, All the President’s Men is really a tremendous movie.

Anyone my age or older, and quite a few people who are younger than I am, know the basics of the Watergate scandal. The first major political scandal that I have any recollection of, Watergate was the political downfall of Richard Nixon and many players from the Republican Party from the early 1970s. It’s also the source of the “–gate” suffix attached to virtually every political scandal for the last 40 years.

This film, based on the book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, is not about the Watergate break in. What it is about is the investigation from the perspective of the two reporters. This is about breaking the story, tracking down the sources, and finding out as much information as possible to bring down the president and his cronies. They put together the pieces, dealing with shadowy meetings, and a wall of silence to uncover one of the biggest revealed cover-ups in American political history.

It’s difficult to know precisely how accurate this film portrayal is. It’s nice to see, however, that our two heroes, Woodward (Robert Redford) and Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) are not portrayed as Boy Scouts or as perfect. They have their problems and bad behaviors just like everyone else does, and in no small part, this is something that helps make the film work. Frequently, the two make guesses about things that they believe are right, and using those guesses, manage to trick information out of informants who categorically refuse to go on the record. Woodward claims to is possibly over cautious and paranoid. Bernstein chain smokes and takes chances.

Backing them up throughout are the brass at The Washington Post, specifically Harry Rosenfeld (Jack Warden), Howard Simons (Martin Balsam), and particularly Ben Bradless (Jason Robards). Woodward also gets a great deal of advice from a man known only as Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook), who does not provide actual information, but confirms or denies hunches, and continues to tell the two reporters to pursue the money and follow the trail as far up as it goes.

We live in a day an age when newspapers have ceased to be the way that people get their news. The day and age of the great newspaper man—like Ben Bradlee—are probably gone forever. But there was a time when a reporter (or two) with a notebook, a telephone, and a lot of determination could bring down an entire government.

Honestly, it’s difficult to believe that a story like this could be as engrossing as this one is. There’s corruption and illegal activity throughout, but there’s plenty here to watch. This is a gripping story, with twists and turns. The biggest surprise is that this happens in a film without a single gunshot, death, or even afistfight.

My favorite part throughout is the understated ending. Rather than a big show as convictions roll in, we get nothing but the teletype machine showing us what happened. Brilliant.

Great performances, and a great story. They don’t get a lot better. The backlash of the Watergate scandal was a dark time in American history. Everyone should know this story, and this is a great way to hear it.

Why to watch All the President’s Men: A true story where David really beat Goliath.
Why not to watch: You should already know the ending.

Big, Dumb, and Flashy

Film: Independence Day
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television

Hollywood is known for a number of things. While certainly (as this list generally proves) there are movies that come from Tinseltown that are thoughtful, intelligent, challenging, and well-made, that’s not the most people’s first thought. Hollywood means big budget, lots of explosions and action, and the lowest common denominator.

Thus we have Independence Day, a film stupid enough that I had a hard time believing it didn’t come from the scaly, brimstone-scented hands of Michael Bay. In this film, gigantic alien spacecraft enter Earth’s atmosphere, blow up a significant number of cities, and then are finally destroyed by a triumphant human population that deals with its devastation with grit, determination, and massive logical inconsistencies.

Rather than go into the ins and outs of the film itself, I’d rather discuss the massive inconsistencies, bad logic, stupidity, and plot holes that are foisted on a public that deserves a lot better. Watch Independence Day and you will discover the following:

The assistant to the president of the United States (Bill Pullman as that president) keeps her private cell phone number listed in the phone book “in case of emergencies.” Because the American public is generally well-behaved enough that she wouldn’t be inundated with prank phone calls at all hours of the day.

The best way to destroy any major city is to plant your alien spacecraft over a recognizable landmark and fire. It doesn’t really matter if it is in the center of the city or not—as long as it’s something people would know, it’ll work.

When you are a fighter pilot like Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) and watch your best friend (Harry Connick, Jr.) killed in action by aliens, it doesn’t really matter. You can still celebrate as long as you destroy one alien spacecraft at the cost of your own plane.

A human being is capable of knocking out an alien wearing full body armor with a punch to the head.

Cars left in traffic will keep the keys on the driver’s side visor.

Entry into top secret government facilities by a horde of civilians can be achieved by driving up in a pickup truck with one alien body. This allows entry for everybody in the entire procession.

The American government is willing to risk the president’s life on a suicide mission.

Everyone in the world speaks English, and is equally inspired by a single speech from the president of the U.S.

Macintosh products, which at the time were rarely compatible with each other, are completely compatible with alien motherships.

Alien life forms never improve their technology. A ship that crash lands on Earth in the 1950s will be completely similar to one that attacks 45 years later. Essentially, this would be like someone landing a P-51B Mustang on a modern aircraft carrier and having no one notice.

A pilot who flies modern aircraft is capable of flying alien spacecraft as long as he sees it in combat. This is the equivalent of my saying that I can compete in NASCAR because I’ve watched part of a race on television. Additionally, anyone who has flown any aircraft at all at any time in the past can be trained in less than one day to fly a modern jet. How different can they be?

If your parent loses faith, keep a Bible/Torah/Quran/other scripture on your person at all time so that if something else happens, you can immediately rekindle that faith.

Ultimately, this is a movie that trades specifically and singularly on its special effects. The characters in the film are not so much characters as archetypes who fill specific roles and have no real personality other than a couple of quirks and a specific role to play. Bill Pullman is the president, so he is young, noble, good-looking, and courageous. His wife (Mary McDonnell) is smart, educated, well-dressed, and noble. The guy who works at the cable station (Jeff Goldblum) is hyper-intelligent, caring, and decent, and his father (Judd Hirsch) is equally caring, smart, and filled with the wisdom of every old Jewish guy ever. The scientist from Area 51 (Brent Spiner) is stereotypically goofy and lacking in social skills.

Independence Day is an insult to the intelligence of anyone older than 15 with a brain that works even mildly. I can only surmise that it’s on this list because of the special effects, which really are good, particularly the explosions during the start of the alien war. However, since the release of this film, a number of other movies have been released that not only have special effects as good or better, but that are also far better films, less insultingly stupid. I can’t see how this film can be justified on this list when something like Jason and the Argonauts is ignored. Even an oddball sci-fi film like Serenity has decent effects without making me feel like Hollywood thinks I’m a dumbass. How about Spider-Man 2?

This is a big, dumb movie, and it should have never come anywhere close to being on this list. I feel stupider for having watched it again.

Why to watch Independence Day: Special effects that are still pretty good, even more than a dozen years later.
Why not to watch: This movie believes you are really, really stupid.

And Justice for All

Film: Philadelphia
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television

Hollywood often gets a bug up its ass about one cause or another. Often, this results in a pretty good film, or even a great one. Films like Hotel Rwanda happen not because someone wanted to make a movie about Africa, but because there was a cause that needed to be brought to light to the rest of the world. The same is true for the film Philadelphia, which resulted in an Oscar win for Tom Hanks and one for Bruce Springsteen for best original song.

The story here is a pretty simple one, which tends to work well for cause movies, since it gives the audience an obvious good guy and an equally obvious bad guy. Andrew Beckett (Hanks) is an up-and-coming attorney with a powerful law firm in Philadelphia. The partners in the firm are consistently impressed with Beckett’s work, and give him charge over their most important client. What Beckett isn’t telling them is that a) he’s gay and b) he’s HIV-positive and suffering from AIDS.

Sadly, one of the partners has had experience with AIDS patients and knows what the signs of the disease look like. He spots a lesion on Beckett’s head, and before we can say “Andrew Beckett has AIDS,” he’s being sandbagged at work and his efforts are being sabotaged by co-workers, almost certainly with the tacit approval of the firm’s head, Charles Wheeler (Jason Robards).

This leads to Beckett losing his job. Convinced that he was fired not for incompetence but because he has AIDS, he recruits a lawyer one step above an ambulance chaser. This lawyer, Joe Miller (Denzel Washington) initially doesn’t want the case, not because he thinks he can’t win, but because he dislikes homosexuals. Eventually, however, seeing Beckett struggling with the case and living through obvious discrimination, he decides to come on board and try the case.

That’s pretty much the whole story here. There are no big surprises. In fact, during the start of the trial, Miller comments that there will be no surprise witnesses and no tearful confessions on the witness stand, and there aren’t. We see Beckett’s struggle, watch the court proceedings and the skillful and half-truthful attacks from the defense attorney (Mary Steenburgen) and see Andrew’s struggles both with the damage done to his reputation and the damage done to his body by the disease. Along the way, Miller learns to respect this man who is dying in front of him, and to come to some level of acceptance with the gay community.

Any message movie, or cause movie, tends to be simplistic in terms of story because the goal is to get the message out rather than confuse the viewers. What’s worth mentioning here, though, is that Andrew Beckett is not portrayed as a saint or a perfect man. He certainly has his character flaws, missteps, and mistakes, all of which are brought out in the trial. It would be easy to make him someone so easy to like that we root for him. It’s more impressive to make him a flawed, human individual, and make us want to root for him anyway, and that’s what Hanks and Demme manage here.

There are also great performances. Hanks, naturally, is the one easiest to pour praise on, but there really isn’t a bad one. Denzel Washington gives one of his better performances here as the ambulance chaser-turned crusader, managing to convey a lot of tenderness in the second half of the film with a gesture or a look. Another good performance here is Antonio Banderas as Miguel, Beckett’s partner. It would be easy to look at Banderas’s career and expect him to do little but look pretty, but he too is real, and provides an excellent counterpoint to Hanks’s character. It’s a moving portrayal, and done beautifully.

I don’t generally like films that slam me over the head with a message, and Philadelphia could have easily been that movie. It isn’t, though. Instead, it is a movie first, and a message second, which makes the message all that more effective and penetrating.

Why to watch Philadelphia: A smart movie about a cause that still rankles.
Why not to watch: It’s not like you expect it to be happy, do you?