Viva Las Vegas

            This is a classy, and sometimes suggestive Elvis movie. It’s too much serendipity to be a 2, but it’s a really fun movie, and worth watching, even though I can’t give it a good rating. Elvis Presley (Jailhouse Rock) plays Race Car driver Lucky Jackson, who comes to Vegas in hopes of gambling up enough money to by the supercharged engine his race car needs to win the Vegas Grand Prix.

            Ann Margaret plays Rusty, a swim instructor with a turbulent past who doesn’t want to fall in love with Lucky, but can’t help it, really. She doesn’t want a man who’ll race toys all his life, but Lucky can’t resist a challenge, and he comes to win.

            That’s really all you can say, I mean, that’s the plot, and there’s a bunch of great song and dance numbers, including, obviously Elvis’s rendition of Viva Los Vegas, and the dance move ‘the dog’. My favorite is Elvis’s walking minstrel rendition of “The Lady loves me”, man, for a rip-off artist who can’t really act, he sure had some pipes. GO watch this movie, and you’ve seen all the Elvis Movies.

Waking Life

            This movie isn’t even really what I would call a traditional film. It’s a series of post-modern vignettes illustrating many of the points and subtle realities of the postmodern era. Some of my favorites are the one about the boat car, the story about the gun, the holy moment, the explanation of quantum mechanics and free will, and the defense of modern existentialism as a practical philosophy.

            The uniting element of the vignettes is the straightman, Jason. Jason is caught in a series of what he believes are dreams but may in fact be reality, however, he can not distinguish between his dreams and his waking life.

            He encounters many individuals that recognize his phenomenon and are rotoscoped in a very provocative fashion. This is a precursor to A Scanner Darkly, both are Linklater works, and both use the life action rotoscoping technique which creates a potent and heady effect in the viewing.

            This isn’t much to go on, as I said this is definitely a 2, but not really a film, and not something you should watch unless you are prepared to take notes. It would be a great assignment in a philosophy class, and each of the vignettes could be explored further in their philosophical and practical significance to both Jason and the movie watcher. This is great.

The Fountain

            This movie is beautiful. That is the simplest way to describe it. It’s absolutely wonderful, and a true triumph of existential and religious philosophies, rolled together intoa  dervish of emotion and images of astounding glory.

            We follow three extremely well shot plotlines, one is a Dr. Tommy Greg (Hugh Jackman, X-Men) and his lovely, but cancer stricken wife, Issy (Rachel Weisz) who is charming, and resilient, despite her condition. Tommy’s role as a doctor is of paramount importance, because he is actually a research doctor, conducting experiments to eradicate brain tumours, and he does so explicitly to save his wife.

            The parallel universe is a book Issy has been writing, entitled ‘The Fountain’ which chronicles a conquistador fighting for the queen of spain, in search of the tree of life in guatamala, in order to save the country from the inquisition.

            These two are bordered and outlined by Tommy’s inner self, which is portrayed as a caretaker of a tree, flying through a vast universe toward a strange nebula surrounding a dying star.

            Darren Aronofsky (Dir. Requiem for a Dream) is supremely triumphant in this managery of light and imagination. It’s quite epic, and very sobering. I almost cried, and this is now the closest movie I have ever some to crying (Used to be Saturday Night Fever) This is simply a beautiful 2 of a movie.

Into the Wild

            Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch, Emperor’s Club) has just graduated from Emery University. He’s got 24,000$ in the bank, and it looks probable he’ll be headed to Harvard Law ina  brand new car thanks to his parents. Everything seems to be going his way. But the McCandless mentality has been altered by overexposure to his own culture. ‘

As his sister (Jenna Malone, Donnie Darko) observes in narrative, the weight of the world broke the frail strings knit by his parent’s vapid, dysfunctional materialistic sensibilities. Christopher cannot be a slave to money like his parents, he cannot be a slave to appearances like his fellow students. He will not let himself settle for anything less than truth, beauty, and freedom.

His pursuit of happiness begins at age 21 when his car is mired in a flash flood while driving across New Mexico. In the morning, he puts all he thinks he’ll need into a backpack, straps on his hiking boots, burns the last $500 in his wallet, and hits the open road, hitching, hiking, and doing what he needs to in order to truly live.

His adventures lead him all over the world, with only clothing, trust, and a few select books to read as he pursues honest free happiness. He also needs a new name, and so he assumes the identity of Alexander Supertramp. He tramps with the best of them, seeking what he can only imagine. He eventually lands in Alaska, with a .22 rifle, a box of ammo, a weeks rations and winter gear, and marches into the wilderness.

What Christopher/Alexander discovers in his travels is the lesson and moral of the story. There is so much more to life than adventures, because life is meant to be shared. It is the idea of fellowship which escapes him, though he makes friends easily, he flees it all trying to escape the sins of his father…and finds only his death. 2. Brilliant. Amazing. So Sad.Yet Beautiful. And True.

In Cold Blood

This movie is a classic. It’s an amazing exploration of the killer’s psyche and what motivates and shapes a criminal. It’s an amazing and heart wrenching tale, and really captures the sadness of a life wasted.

            It follows a troubled young man, an ex-marine, who was wounded in the Korean war and walks with a permanent limp, and is addicted to aspirin. After getting out of prison for robbery, he hooks up with another ex-con, who has certainty that he knows where a farmer has a safe filled with cash.

            In a freakish snap, the other fellow goes mad and kills the whole family. Taking place in between Kansas and Missouri, they are of course convicted and set up to be lynched. The whole process, of them fleeing the cops, through mexico and California, only to wind up back in Missouri is really well drawn out. It’s a masterpiece.

            The whole time you see the mind of a killer operating. It’s so sad. An instant on my top 25, and a sure 2.

Rock of Ages

I have to agree with the commercials for this one, it really does rock, and Tom Cruise really does steal the show. He's really phenomenal, channeling his energy into this role. his best performance probably since  Magnolia. Other fantastic actors were all surprises to me, as I didn't know much about the film before viewing. Russell Brand (Get Him to The Greek), as messed up as his personal life is, takes over every scene he's in by being hilarious, and his tandem act alongside Alec Baldwin (Malice) is as unexpected as it is endearing.
realistically, if you don't like 80's butt-rock, and hairbands, you probably won't understand this movie nearly as much, but you will probably still enjoy it. The most surprising performance was by Catherine Zeta-Jones (Entrapment) who really lays it on thick as an uptight senators wife who opposes all rock and/or roll.
The plot itself was actually a little incoherent, I mean, the most important part is the two young lovers, who end up on far ends of the spectrum of despair. The boyband references are hilarious. But the actual peril of the Bourbon Room is pretty contrived, as well as the actual potential for the Sunset Strip to shut down.
Perhaps the most fun character is Paul Giamatti's (Lady in the Water) sleezy music A&R rep, because he is really awful, and it's always fun to identify what we don't like as an audience.
As an avid music listener, I found the connection of the divine in music of all kinds trumps the staunch and unsatisfying piety of those who are in denial of their own sin and unwilling to forgive and accept the sins of others, and really the only way to break free of convention is to embrace the subversive, all the while avoiding the destructive. There are vast grey areas of consequence in this simple musicians tale. An easy 2, re-watchable and soundtrack downloadable.

Surrogates

Bruce Willis (Die Hard) plays a troubled detective who has lost his son in a seemingly utopian world which quickly begins to disturb and frighten people as their utopia is broken by a strange killer. The source of Utopia is a highly advanced prosthetic designed to allow quadripelegics complete use bodies, as well as a replacement for soldiers.

            The prosthetic known as a surrogate advances rapidly and within 20 years, everyone uses surrogates. Trouble arises when Willis’s character reports to the scene of an alleged assault on a surrogate. The deviance arises when it appears that the two operators were both killed by the assault, something that is not supposed to be possible through a surrogate.

            Matters are complicated further by a variety of elements including a religious sec which protests all use of surrogates as abominations led by their prophet (Ving Rames, Baby Boy). Their hatred of surrogates leads Willis to question the group, forcing him to venture out into the real world without a surrogate, encountering real pain.

            The complications arise when it is clear that multiple people are conspiring on both sides of the mystery, and further complications arise when a jailbreak program is discovered allowing anyone the user to control any surrogate, not simply one that has been biocoded to him or her.

            You can see the Sci as well as the Fi are working overtime in this unique thriller, which, although it is predictable, it is still a unique take on the dominance of posthumanity and the on going discussion of what it truly means to be human. In a very interesting twist, the assumption here, as well as in Gamer, is that rather than the matrix-esque isolation offered in virtual reality being imposed on humanity, is voluntarily requested, effectively demonstrating a Huxleyan dystopia in contrast to an Orwellian vision. I give it a 2. Also, this is yet another graphic novel transformed for the big screen, although many changes to the story were made, so of course I liked it. I'm easy to please though.