Player One

Film: Wreck-It Ralph
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

I have a long connection to video games despite not having been an active gamer for a dozen years. I won’t go into it beyond saying that it was my career for 12 years or so as well. When Wreck-It Ralph showed up, I knew it would be a film that either pissed me off to no end or that I would love completely. It would depend entirely on how much respect was given the various source materials used to make the film. If it dealt with video games and video game culture without making it a joke, it could be the best thing going.

Thanks to smart writing, good characters, great use of classic video game characters, and a great deal of respect, Wreck-It Ralph is one of the great animated movies of the current decade. I went into this the first time with my fingers crossed and left the theater a believer. When people care about the story and not just about making a buck on their film, it shows, and Wreck-It Ralph was made by people who understand not only how to tell a story well, but who also know the culture they’re involving themselves in. Wreck-It Ralph was made by people who like video games.

In the Navy

Film: Operation Petticoat
Format: DVD from Plano Community Library District through interlibrary loan on laptop.

War comedies are a strange breed of film. War, by nature, is deadly serious, and yet something so terribly serious does lend itself to a particular type of comedy. Black humor is the obvious guess, but a film like Operation Petticoat opts instead for something much closer to screwball. It’s also worth saying that 1959 was a good year for both Cary Grant and Tony Curtis. Both are top billed in this, and both had even more successfully financial films in the same year; Grant had North by Northwest and Curtis did Some Like it Hot.

Rear Admiral Matt Sherman (Cary Grant) boards the submarine Sea Tiger a couple of hours before the sub is to be decommissioned. Inside, he discovers the captain’s log. Since he was the first captain of the sub, it’s his own log, and the entire film is spent in flashback as Sherman goes through the log of the Sea Tiger’s particular adventures during World War II in the Pacific.

Et Tu, Manager?

Film: The Ides of March
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

Everyone knows that politics is a dirty business. There’s a saying that anyone who wants to be president shouldn’t be trusted with the job. In my experience that same statement goes for Congress, state legislatures, and possibly most county and other local positions as well. Everyone pretty much knows this, but we tend to forget it at times. Films like The Ides of March serve as something like a vaccination for that forgetting. We need to be reminded frequently that our political process, still potentially the best one in the world, is still pretty shitty in a lot of respects and probably will be for the foreseeable future.

The Ides of March tells a highly fictionalized version of the Democratic primary leading up to a presidential election, presumably, based on the year of release analogous to the 2008 election. That said, it could have really been any year when there was an actual primary, and for that matter, it could have just as easily been Republican candidates. The story is told through the point of view of Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), the assistant campaign manager for Pennsylvania Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney). Stephen is a true believer, someone who refuses to compromise or play dirty because he feels that he doesn’t need to, thanks to the integrity of his candidate.

It's Afrikaans, not Africaan't

Film: Invictus
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

Someone needs to talk to marketing people. There are times when you can be assured that most of a film’s audience knows the history and there are times when the film audience doesn’t. In the case of Invictus, which follows both Nelson Mandela’s early days as President of South Africa and the 1995 Rugby World Cup, it’s much more the latter than the former. I’m sure there are plenty of people who know all about rugby, but the bulk of an American audience views the game with the same quizzical expression we do Australian rules football and cricket. So putting a picture of Matt Damon on the front of the DVD case holding up the trophy? That kind of spoils the ending.

Anyway, that really is what Invictus is about. Mandela (Morgan Freeman) is released from prison and shortly thereafter, with black South Africans given the right to vote, elected to the presidency of the nation. Naturally, this is a tense situation, since organized and authorized racism had been the law of the land for so long. Mandela seeks to change all of that, first be assuring the white staff members of his government office that they are welcome to stay at their posts. This is further reinforced when, needing additional security, he brings in a team of white, military trained personnel who a few years before had been trained to repress more than half of the population. None of this sits well with his head of security, Jason Tshabalala (Tony Kgoroge).

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1977

The Contenders:

Diane Keaton: Annie Hall (winner)
Marsha Mason: The Goodbye Girl
Jane Fonda: Julia
Anne Bancroft: The Turning Point
Shirley MacLaine: The Turning Point

Here We Go Again

Film: Les Miserables (1935)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’ve said for some time that my problem with the 2012 version of Les Miserables is that it’s a well-made version of a story that I don’t like that much. With me, though, there is always the danger that the reason I didn’t like this latest version is that it is a musical, and musicals are the genre I tend to be the hardest on. Tonight seemed a good chance to test this belief. The 1935 version of Les Miserables is essentially the same story (albeit a much shorter version) without all of the music and singing.

I’m not going to rehash the story here save the basics, but even the basics will take a few paragraphs. Jean Valjean (Fredric March) is arrested for stealing a loaf of bread. For this crime, he is sent away for 10 years, overseen by the dictatorial Inspector Javert (Charles Laughton). Upon his release, he is shown kindness by a priest, and eventually recreates himself as a captain of industry under a pseudonym. In so doing, though, he violates his parole, making Jean Valjean a wanted criminal.

Elementary!

Film: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Format: DVD from Oregon Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

I can’t call myself the world’s biggest Sherlock Holmes fan, although I did name my dog after one of Doyle’s books. (My dog’s name is Baskerville if you’re playing the home version of my trivia game.) I feel about Holmes roughly the way I feel about, say, Star Trek. I’m enough of a fan to follow it and know the main players, but it’s nothing I particularly seek out. I was interested in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution mainly for the cast, which includes Robert Duvall and Alan Arkin. Now that I have a little time away from work (first time in months), I can work a little more with interlibrary loan, which is why I ordered this one for today.

This, it should be noted, is not a story by Arthur Conan Doyle, but Nicholas Meyer using Doyle’s characters. It’s kind of a two-part story. The first half deals entirely with Holmes and the second half with a case that arises suddenly. Despite this, the film doesn’t feel disjointed. Events of the first half creep into the second, and the narrative actually works despite there being two legitimate conclusions.