Blade Runner 2049: A Review

BLADE RUNNER 2049

One of the great personal tragedies for me is that my dear friend, Fidel Gomez, Jr., who died suddenly and unexpectedly in August 2017, never got to see the sequel to one of if not his all-time favorite films: Blade Runner.  I cannot remember whether he was eager for it or dismissed the idea of it.  I would say he was intrigued with being able to revisit the Philip K. Dick dystopia of replicants and the humans who loved them.  He did expect to see it, perhaps even going to the Alamo Drafthouse to see whether or not Blade Runner 2049 honored or shamed his beloved original; that expectation makes the fact that despite his plans and hopes he was taken by Death before he had that chance all the more sad to me.

As such, this will be a bit of a painful review, because it will be difficult if not impossible for me to watch Blade Runner 2049 without thinking of him in some way.  I think, though, that even though I cannot say his thoughts on Blade Runner 2049 would equal my own, we tended to see things in a similar vein.  As such, I think I can say with a certain amount of confidence that Fidel would have been extremely disappointed with Blade Runner 2049, finding that it took out almost everything that made Blade Runner this brilliant piece of filmmaking and drowned it in a sea of self-importance.

For those who didn't see Blade Runner, we are quickly caught up with things: replicants, human-like machines that are not robots but 'more human than human', are still out there.  There's a newer, better model created by tech billionaire Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), but the older replicants are sought out to be 'retired' (read: destroyed) by police officers known as 'blade runners'.  We now get a blade runner who is himself a replicant who goes by K (Avant-garde actor Ryan Gosling).  K has just retired another replicant when he makes a curious discovery as he investigates the replicant's abode.

A box buried beneath a withered solitary tree.  What could be inside that box?

The LAPD discover that the box is a de facto ossuary, containing the bones of a replicant.  However, that replicant, a female, turns up another mystery.  This replicant has given birth.

Can replicants reproduce?  Can they actually be...human?

This question horrifies K's superior, Joshi (Robin Wright), who insists K investigate this, find the replicant child, and retire it.  He now begins his investigation, tying the dead replicant mother to a former blade runner named Deckard.

With only his hologram woman Joi (Ana de Armas) to serve as a companion, he keeps searching for the whereabouts of this lost replicant child.  Wallace, for his part, sends his replicant girl Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) to retrieve Racheal's bones from the LAPD and find the child also.

At first, with his own memories coming to him, K believes he either could be or is indeed the child he seeks.  Memories are implanted into replicants to make them think they are human even if they are not, but K's own memories turn out to be real.  He seeks out the best memory-implant specialist, Dr. Anna Stelline (Carla Juri), who confirms K's memory as real.

K tells Joshi he's 'retired' the replicant child, delighting her.  However, he is on thin ice with the LAPD, and she gives him 48 hours to pull himself together before he too is retired.  Luv is still on the hunt though, and K is now looking for Deckard (Harrison Ford), whom he finds in the radioactive Las Vegas.

It becomes a battle between Luv and K for the truth, with one last twist involving the real Lost Replicant Child.

I found Blade Runner 2049 has a sense of its own importance, that is when I wasn't falling asleep to its dour and pseudo-profound worldview.   There is a certain heaviness, a certain morose and self-imposed grandness that is off-putting.  It is as if director Denis Villeneuve and cowriters Hampton Fancher and Michael Green decided that whatever themes either Blade Runner or Dick's original story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? weren't grand enough. As such, they had to hammer home the importance of Blade Runner 2049, the vastness of it all in terms of both visuals and  themes.

This quasi-meditation on what makes us human can work, but Blade Runner 2049 decided that it would be the final word on the matter.  What it ended up being was remote, aloof, even shallow in its profundity.

I know that K is a replicant, but Avant-garde actor Gosling did not have to make him into an almost literal robot.  I'm souring on Avant-garde actor Gosling as a great thespian, finding him now to be a one-trick pony, an actor incapable of showing any actual human emotion but making a great go at having others think he's as profound as his long list of dour roles.

For the life of me, I do not understand why Blade Runner 2049 opted to make all characters emotional-less save for Wright and in a small role, Barkhad Abdi, who both showed some range.  Edward James Olmos, who had a small but important role in the original, is reduced to one throwaway scene, a terrible disservice to him.

Even when the minor character of Coco (David Dastmalchian), a forensic agent at the LAPD, comes across Luv and is later murdered, he shows no emotion when confronting someone who clearly should not have been there.

I think Villeneuve and Company genuinely thought that because this takes place in a dystopian future, we were meant to lose all emotion.  Over and over, I could not help thinking why hardly anyone was capable of showing emotion.

For all the buildup his character had, Leto, doing his Leto-like Method Acting with all caps, might just as well not been in the film.  Same for Ford, who sometimes looks genuinely confused as to how he ended up there.

Sadly, Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer's score was Vangelis-lite, echoing but not mastering the iconic music that Vangelis wrote for Blade Runner.

About the only saving grace Blade Runner 2049 has is Roger Deakins' beautiful and mesmerizing cinematography.  Long overlooked and overdue by the Academy, this might finally be his year, even if I found just about everything else dull, monotonous, and self-important.  There is also what I take to be a shout-out to Soylent Green, as the music to turn Joi on and off comes from the first movement of Beethoven's 6th or Pastoral Symphony, which was used so well in the Charlton Heston/Edward G. Robinson classic.

Blade Runner simultaneously entertained and made you think.  Blade Runner 2049 just made you sleep.

Near the end, Leto's character says, "You don't know what pain is.  You will learn".  After watching Blade Runner 2049, I think I know what he was referring to.

DECISION: D-

All the Money in the World: A Review

ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD

All the Money in the World was headed towards a routine Oscar campaign when it nearly got derailed because of one of its stars. In a 'how the mighty have fallen' situation, allegations of sexual harassment and assault against Kevin Spacey by a cacophony of young men (at least young at the time of the alleged assaults) forced director Ridley Scott to remove Spacey from the film and reshoot Spacey's scenes with Christopher Plummer as the oil baron J. Paul Getty.

This wasn't some cameo that could be reshot over a weekend; J. Paul Getty was a major character, if not the driving force of this truer-than-true story of greed and moral corruption.  The turnaround was quick, and tremendous credit should be given to Scott, who made the transition so well-done that it's hard to remember that Spacey was even in All the Money in the World or that Plummer wasn't there to begin with.  This story, based on true events, will shock those unfamiliar with a notorious kidnapping, or of the wealthiest man in the world but who was so destitute when it came to a heart.

John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer, no relation to Christopher) is living a semi-bohemian life in Rome when he is abducted.  One of the kidnappers, Cinquanta (Romain Duris) calls Getty's mother Gail Harris (Michelle Williams) demanding $17 million dollars for her son's return.  However, there are few things Cinquanta and his gang are not aware of.

They are not aware that Gail is a Getty by marriage, and that she is divorced from J. Paul Getty II (Andrew Buchan).  They are unaware that Gail receives no alimony from the Gettys and thus does not have a vast fortune of her own. What they are most unaware of is that J. Paul Getty (Plummer) will not pay a penny for his favorite grandson. 

He will, however, pay over a million dollars for a painting.  That he will do.

Gail, despite her intense loathing of her ex father-in-law, pushes to get J. Paul to pay something, but he will not budge, insisting payment will only encourage more people to take his other grandchildren and take his money.  J. Paul, however, does get his fix-it-man, Fletcher Chase (Mark Walhberg) out from negotiating with the Saudis for Getty Oil to locate Paul, with the minimum of costs.

Chase is good at his job, but as the months drag on with no payment forthcoming, a rescue effort fails as Paul has been sold to another group of criminals, with Cinquanta staying on.  These criminals work to make the ransom a mere $4 million, but again Getty refuses to contemplate paying anything.  Eventually he gives way, but with conditions.  He'll give a certain amount to his son (who is not mentally competent due to his drug-addled mind): the maximum amount that can be tax-deductible.  He'll also give his son the remaining difference as a loan, which he can pay back with interest.

Further, in exchange for this money which J. Paul II can then give to Gail, Gail agrees to give up all rights to all her children with J. Paul II and give them to J. Paul Getty himself.  Angry but desperate, she agrees.

Not that it helps, as the criminals, now beyond their breaking point and after J. Paul III made a failed escape, decide to take drastic measures.  They slice off Paul's ear and send it to the company, making it clear they will keep cutting parts off until the ransom is paid or Paul is dead.  Even J. Paul is shocked by this but it does not move him far from his position.  Frustrated, Chase berates the old man, who is shocked that anyone would dare question him, let alone his longtime fixer. Chase convinces Gail to pretend she has the full $4 million instead of just the $1 to buy time.  This piques J. Paul's interest, convinced he's being played.

At long last, J. Paul Getty finally gives up, giving Gail all the money she needs and voiding the previous agreement.  Following the detailed instructions on the payoff, Gail and Chase make the payment but Paul, advised by Cinquanta, runs off instead of being at the designated pickup spot.  It's now a race between Gail & Chase and the criminals to see who will get to Paul first.

In the end, Chase retires, J. Paul Getty himself dies, and in a twist of fate, it's Gail who ends up as the trustee of the Getty estate, J. Paul II being too diminished through his dissolute life of drink and drugs and the grandchildren too young to run it. 

If anything shocks about All the Money in the World, apart from the ear-slicing, it's J. Paul Getty himself.  Some things about him are almost hilarious though true-to-life (J. Paul Getty, for example, was notorious for having a pay phone installed in his estate to stop others from making calls on his literal dime).  Others, however, are shocking in the man's coldness towards others.

There is a brilliant scene that Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa (adapting John Pearson's book about the Getty kidnapping) where J. Paul arrives at a 'secret' location to make a payment.  He even had a million dollars in a suitcase.  As J. Paul discusses the price with an unknown man, audiences may think J. Paul is talking about his grandson.

Instead, we quickly see that the exorbitant price Getty is grousing over is over a painting.  It's a painting so rare and valuable that the seller tells Getty it probably can't be openly displayed (though whether any of this is legal is questionable).  Getty examines the Madonna & Child he is buying, and looks upon it with a mixture of awe and greed.  He says something to the effect of 'my dear, sweet boy', lending further weight to the dichotomy of a man who would not blink at spending millions for a painting or sculpture but would blanch at spending a penny for his own flesh and blood.

The fact that he died clutching that painting, looking at it tenderly, speaks volumes as to what kind of man J. Paul Getty was.

Throughout All the Money in the World, the character of who J. Paul was comes across, sometimes in scenes like the one mentioned above, sometimes in bits set up earlier that have a surprising and sad payoff later.  Early in the film, at what appears to be something of a reconciliation between Getty Senior and Junior, the elder Getty makes a curious gift to his grandson Paul: a Minotaur he says is a rare antique.  In her desperate search for funds, Gail suddenly remembers that Minotaur, finds it, and goes to an auction house to sell it.  The auction house head tells her it isn't worth anything and advises her to go see his friend at a nearby museum.  One stop at the museum gift shop, where she finds dozens of similar Minotaurs, is enough to devastate her to the cauldron of lies and disinterest her ex father-in-law has for people.

It is difficult now to see how Christopher Plummer's version of J. Paul Getty matches up against what Kevin Spacey did with the role.  If, as I hope, Scott releases an alternate version of All the Money in the World with Spacey in it, or at least the scenes as a DVD extra, we will be able to compare the two.  Basing things on my own memory, I think Plummer's version might be better.  It's the scene where the press asks J. Paul how much would he pay to release his grandson and he replies, "Nothing".

In the Spacey version available via the trailer, the 58-year-old Spacey in make-up makes this a very cold statement, a firm declaration. In the film, the 88-year-old Plummer makes this into a more dismissive, almost humorous statement, as if such a question is silly.

Plummer makes his J. Paul Getty someone who is so immersed in the art of the deal that he truly cannot see past his ledger, a true-life mix of Ebeneezer Scrooge and Charles Foster Kane.  As Gail in her patrician manner berates J. Paul for taking advantage of her position to wrestle all her children away from her, we see a slight discomfort in J. Paul, as if a tiny bit of him knew what he was doing was morally wrong but ultimately not 'bad' if it was in his best interests.

While both the Spacey/Plummer brouhaha and Plummer's performance itself have taken much of the attention, I think we can now say that Michelle Williams really is among the best actresses working today and one who needs to work more.  Her Gail was excellent: neither hysterical or cool to crisis, she was a mother working through horrific circumstances, balancing the demands of the situation with what little she had to work with. 

Both Charlie Plummer and Romain Duris do strong work as J. Paul III and Cinquanta, the desperate victim and the surprisingly human abductor who in the end gets a bit of redemption.

If there's a flaw performance-wise, it's Marky Mark.  I have never accepted the idea that Wahlberg can act, let alone be in the same league as a Plummer or Williams.  Here, he has one expression: his usual look of confusion.

A couple of elements that should merit note are Daniel Permerton's score and Arthur Max's set design, the latter in particular.  They accentuate the characters, particularly the dark world of J. Paul Getty, who is almost always in a black-dominated room, reflecting his heart of darkness.

All the Money in the World generally moves well, in particular the last half-hour as Gail and Chase race to save Paul from his abductors.  It has strong performances from almost everyone and tells this sad story with grace and respect. 

People think money is the root of all evil.  That is a misquote from Scripture.  1st Timothy 6:10 says it's "the love of money" that is "the root of all kinds of evil".  For better or worse, few people have lived that verse out more than J. Paul Getty, and that root ended up devouring his future generations.

J. Paul Getty III
1956-2011

 

J. Paul Getty
1892-1976

DECISION: A-

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: A Review

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

I'm too young to remember the term 'honky' but do remember the term 'poor white trash', which I think is still used today.  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a slice of life about them po' white trash, a place where crimes go both unsolved and apparently rampant without repercussions.  Moments of actual possibilities sink into almost a spoof of serious crime dramas, and while I've been told that Three Billboards is a 'dark comedy', I don't think I laughed none.

Seven months after the rape and murder of her daughter Angela remains unsolved, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) decides to put up three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.  "Raped While Dying", "And Still No Arrests", "How Come, Chief Willoughby?" read the signs.  Despite the signs being on an out-of-the-way road where only those who get lost will read them, the three signs irritate both Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) and his loyal deputy, Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell). 

The Ebbing Police Department makes the Sparta Police Department from In the Heat of the Night look downright progressive by comparison.  It's an open secret that Dixon assaults black residents, and he is also a drunk who insults people and has all the earmarks of an unsympathetic ass.  Not even living with his Momma has made him anywhere remotely human.  Chief Willoughby for his part has enough on his plate, particularly the fact that he's dying from pancreatic cancer (which I'm not entire sure he can pronounce: either 'pancreatic' or 'cancer').

Despite Willoughby's insistence that there is little to no physical evidence on which to make any kind of investigation into Angela's death, let alone an arrest, Mildred won't back down.  The whole town apparently is opposed to her signs, down to where the local dentist tries to harm her when she's there for a checkup.  Mildred also has to deal with her angry son Robbie (Lucas Hedges), displeased with the billboards and all the attention they bring.  She also has to endure the taunts of her ex-husband Charlie (John Hawkes) and his 19-year-old girlfriend Penelope (Samara Weaving).

Willoughby spends a day with his wife Anne (Abbie Cornish) and their two daughters, then kills himself.  This leaves a massive impact on the community and on all those connected with those three billboards: Mildred discovers that Willoughby made a month's payments on them as a way to taunt her, Dixon assaults Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones), the man who rented out the billboards, in broad daylight, culminating in Dixon tossing Red out of Red's second-floor window.  The literal new sheriff in town, Abercrombie (Clarke Peters) fires Dixon, but despite literally seeing Dixon throw a man out a window and assault him, and even having Dixon all but brag about it, does not actually arrest him.

Shortly after, the three billboards are set ablaze.  As a topper, Mildred throws Molotov cocktails at the Ebbing Police Headquarters, unaware that Dixon is inside, reading a letter from Willoughby telling him he needs to learn to love and not hate to be a good detective.  He suffers major burns, but saves the Angela Hayes file.  Eventually, Dixon overhears a conversation that might be connected to the Hayes murder, Mildred endures a bad date with James (Peter Dinklage), who served as her alibi for the fire, as well as some words of wisdom from Charlie and his bit of fluff, and while the evidence Dixon gets does not point to Angela's actual killer, he and Mildred decide the guy Dixon overheard did commit some kind of crime, so they decide to go to that man's home in Idaho to kill him.  They might not be convinced it's the right thing to do, but they'll decide along the way.

For me, I think my intense disappointment with Three Billboards comes from the fact that it was sold as a serious meditation on crime, revenge and finding peace only to end up with a 'dark comedy'.  I think a 'dark comedy' would be something like a Fargo, but Three Billboards seemed to come from another world altogether, one where we're supposed to laugh at these characters rather than have any genuine sympathy for what is meant to be a serious and tragic situation.

All right, let's say that was the purpose: to laugh at their pain.  I can't do that, at least not in the way writer/director Martin McDonagh presents them.  Starting from when he presents the Hispanic characters (who of course have no names and can't speak English) to how the Anglo characters speak, I think he went overboard in trying to show us how uneducated they were.  The dialogue is filled with 'ain'ts' and 'thems', and to my ear it sounded both unrealistic and almost cartoonish.

Robbie complains to his mother that 'Some of the guys was giving me crap'.  There are other turns of phrases that seemed a bit much in attempting to make everyone in Ebbing a group of unhinged hicks; there was when Willoughby mentioned the struggle between Mildred and Dixon as 'between the two of youse'.  There was when Mildred congratulated herself on the activity going up 'ever since I put them billboards up'.  Someone else commented on how 'Charlie don't know about (the billboards)'.

Maybe it's just me, but even the least educated person I come in contact with knows when to use 'don't' and when to use 'doesn't', the plural and singular not being a mystery.

A bigger problem is that despite McDonagh's insistence, Three Billboards never makes the case as to why the town was on Mildred's side when it came to solving the crime but on Willoughby's side when it came to the billboards.  We hear a lot about that, and even when dentists attack (I guess that's where the 'comedy' comes in).  I'm genuinely surprised that even in a hick town like Ebbing, where judging by the police department the IQ of the town is in the negatives and they run the town like a more inept ISIS, someone could literally punch two people (including a woman) and throw someone out the window and nothing happens to them.

For all the attention Three Billboards is getting, I don't see anything in the performances that is particularly great.  Let me walk that back a touch.  The three leads were good if they meant the roles to be seen as cartoonish and overdone.  Rockwell is at the top of that list, his Dixon so crazed and clueless it's a wonder that he didn't drag his knuckles on the ground when he walked.  Harrelson was better as Willoughby, who had some intelligence to him, and McDormand's angry mother showed flashes of greatness when she remembers her final conversation (or rather argument) with Angela.

It's a pity it didn't do much for Hawkes, who has wonderful range, or Hedges, who plays yet another 'angry grieving young man' as he did in his breakout role in Manchester By the Sea.

There were moments when Three Billboards, if it had taken a more straightforward approach, one that made the characters less caricatures, could have been genuinely moving.  The aforementioned scene between Mildred and Charlie, or another after Dixon comes back from a bar-fight where he got DNA evidence and is visibly injured.  He manages to get into the bathroom, pushing past his alarmed mother.  Despite the low nature of Momma Dixon, she still bangs on the bathroom door, pleading for her son to come out, calling out to him that he's still her little boy, the anguish in her voice real.

I think those moments when the characters appeared human rather than idiotic (Penelope imparting wisdom from a book she read, though she cannot remember whether it was about polio or 'the one with the horses', meaning polo) were the ones that moved me emotionally.

Most of the time though, I though Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri played as farce.  This is a town where a police detective openly assaults people, nearly killing them and where Mildred assaults teenagers and no one ever charges them with anything.  The former is known to beat up on African-Americans (defending himself bizarrely by saying he is 'persons-of-color torturing' versus 'n****r torturing'), the latter everyone knows bombed the police department.

What does someone have to do to literally be arrested in Ebbing, Missouri?

Seriously, who drives around with a fire extinguisher conveniently in their car?

I know a lot of people think highly of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, but I thought almost all of it played like a joke.  It might be a black comedy, but I found it all black and no comedy. 

DECISION: F

In This Corner of the World: A Review

IN THIS CORNER OF THE WORLD

In This Corner of the World appears deceptively simple, but it tackles a well-worn subject of Japanese animation: the horror of World War II on the civilian population.  It is very long, perhaps too long for some people, but it also ends up being a very moving film, one that offers if not clear forgiveness, at least peace.

It is pre-war Japan, and naive dreamer Suzu Urano lives an idyllic life with her family.  It isn't long, however, before she's married off to Shusaku Houjo, who met her briefly on a bridge in Hiroshima.  Suzu, whose great passion is to paint and draw, lives her life quietly with her in-laws, doing her best to be useful even if she is a bit forgetful and absent-minded.

However, as her time goes on the Empire of Japan continues its war, bringing difficulties as she adjusts to her life and marriage.  Shusaku loves Suzu, but they still have yet to have a child.  As far as she is concerned, she still harbors feelings for Mizuhara, a taciturn fellow from her village near Hiroshima whom she painted a picture for a school assignment.  Despite whatever they may feel, she remains loyal to her husband.

The war grows harder, with death raining down on them.  Among those eventually killed are her niece, Harumi, when the little girl steps on a delayed-time bomb.  Suzu was holding Harumi when it exploded, and that bomb not only took Harumi but also her dominant right hand.  Suzu sinks into a depression, and thinks a visit to her family just outside Hiroshima for a festival might lift her spirits.  Before leaving however, she and everyone in town observe a massive cloud burst over Hiroshima, with all communication from there suddenly cut off.

With this and later Nagasaki, the voice of The Emperor is heard for the first time on radio, announcing that the war is over, and they have lost.  Suzu finally goes to find only one sister still living.  She also re-encounters Shusaku, who had been sent there for administrative duties.  There, an orphan who has survived the blast wanders near them.  Shocked, they take her back home, where the extended Houjo family is shocked to find the devastated child is full of lice.  Quick to the bath for her.

In the credits, we see the orphan growing up, with Suzu and Shusaku raising her as their own.

In This Corner of the World is surprisingly free of bitterness or anger despite the subject matter.  Instead, it reflects Suzu's personality: quiet, kind, a dreamer who sees the waves as rabbits in the ocean.  She is an artist, with an artist's sensibilities.  The film is very quiet, floating gently from scenes of her attempting to fit in to her new family and struggling to literally find her way home to one dealing with the horrors of war, even if she stands to admire the beauty of bombardment colors versus the danger she faces because of them.

There are moments of sheer beauty in writer/director Sunao Katabuchi's adaptation of the manga of the same name.  The melding of Suzu's painting of the sea to 'real life' is excellently rendered, and while not skipping on the horrors of war both from a distance (the dangers of shrapnel on Suzu and Harumi) and up close (the 'melting' of the orphan's mother is painful and terrifying).

In This Corner of the World is as I've said, a subject well-worn in Japanese animated film, ranging from the heartbreaking Grave of the Fireflies to the more recent The Wind Rises.  Unlike the former, which dealt with the Hiroshima bombing head-on, or the latter, which was more about how instruments of beauty can be reshaped to instruments of war, In This Corner of the World dealt with the civilian population.  The Urano and Houjo families are impacted by war in all manner of ways, from having food rationed and getting sugar on the black market, to more unusual ways, like when military police confiscate some of Suzu's drawings, paranoid that she is a spy.

This suggestion appears to terrify the Houjos, until the MP's leave and all but Suzu burst out laughing, astonished that anyone would imagine the absent-minded dreamer Suzu could be some sort of Japanese Mata Hari. 

I think though, that perhaps for some, In This Corner of the World floats too slowly, and its two-hour running time may feel a bit of a drain.  Long anime films are par for the course, and while In This Corner of the World is beautiful both storywise and visually, the length may prove a bit taxing for the more casual viewer. 

However, in its tale of one family affected by war, with all its tragedy, and how they had to carry on, even managing to find life goes on with bombs and fire-bombings, In This Corner of the World won't fail to move the viewer.

DECISION: B-

Darkest Hour (2017): A Review (Review #994)

DARKEST HOUR

The critical days of Britain's entry into World War II are fodder for films. Darkest Hour, the film that covers the first month of Winston Churchill's first term as Prime Minister, can feel a bit draining, but with a bravura performance by Gary Oldman and solid work from others, it becomes part political intrigue, part meditation on compromise versus principle.

Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup) has been forced out of office after Britain declared war against Nazi Germany.  Chamberlain, who is dying, and the other Conservative Party leaders, want Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) to become the new Prime Minister.  Even King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn) would prefer Halifax, a man who sees Britain's position as extremely weak and wants to pursue peace negotiations with Hitler.  However, the Opposition, whom Chamberlain wants to form a Coalition government with, will not accept Halifax.  They will accept only one person: Winston Churchill (Oldman).

Churchill was right when it came to the Nazi peril.  He's also tainted in Tory eyes for many reasons: he's seen as self-serving, unreliable, a disastrous military leader (Gallipoli still haunts him) and generally untrusted and disliked by his other elites.  King George VI has his own reasons to dislike Churchill: he was one of the few politicians who openly supported former King Edward VIII, now Duke of Windsor, in his wish to marry Mrs. Simpson.  However, it's Churchill or nothing, so His Majesty has to bend to political reality and call on Churchill to form a government.

Churchill for his part has his own doubts about both his abilities and Britain's, especially when his War Cabinet pushes for negotiations with the Germans.  Halifax and Chamberlain in particular push for a sued peace, convinced that Hitler will allow the British to live and fearing that plunging them into actual fighting will decimate their people.  Churchill in this is unmovable: there will be no negotiations, but he plays things cagey, for he knows saying that outright can force Halifax and Chamberlain to resign, which could lead to a vote of no confidence and the fall of his premiership.

In this critical month, Churchill finds himself under siege figuratively and literally, his goal of rescuing the British Army at Dunkirk a desperate mission.  Should the British fall at Dunkirk, it might probably spell the end of the British Empire.  Despite his wife Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas) to offer support, sometimes at a high cost due to his temper and irascibility, and with his secretary Elizabeth Layton (Lily James) to put a human face on the war, Churchill still finds himself a lone man.

 Halifax and Chamberlain eventually get Churchill to 'see the light' and he offers tentative suggestions that he is open to negotiations.  An unexpected source of support comes his way in the form of His Majesty.  King George VI expresses anger at the thought of fleeing to Canada, and secretly calls on his Prime Minister telling Churchill that he has his full support.  He also encourages Churchill to keep fighting, but to tell the British people the truth about their situation.

On his way to Parliament to address potential terms for negotiations, Churchill slips out of his car and does what he has done only once in his life: ride the Underground (what Americans call the Subway).  He startles the other passengers, and in a brief stoppage he asks the British people their thoughts on the matter.  They are all of one mind: no retreat, no surrender, no negotiations, no matter what the cost. 

With this to buck him up, he addresses a small group of Members of Parliament and lays his case.  Riling up the other MPs, he goes to Parliament and declares that there shall be no surrender.  The dying Chamberlain signals to his supporters to stand with Churchill, and Halifax ruefully acknowledges that Churchill has used the power of the English language to rally the nation.

Darkest Hour hangs on one major element: Gary Oldman.  An actor's actor, he dives into the role of Churchill with his usual total commitment.  Oldman commands the screen both when he is the Churchill we all know and love: tough, unyielding, a master of oratory.  He also holds our interest when we see Churchill in a more private life: worried, fearful, short-tempered, even amused.  In one scene, Layton and another secretary start laughing when the see a photo of the Prime Minister angrily flashing a "V for Victory" sign. 

Churchill asks what is so funny, and it's up to Layton to explain that the way he did it: index and middle finger with forehand facing forward, means 'up your bum', which is considered obscene.  If he holds his fingers with his palm facing forward, it has the meaning he intended.  Churchill, upon finding he inadvertently made a rude gesture, bursts out laughing himself, delighted that he told people to go 'up your bum'.

Oldman shows his range as Churchill when he is on the phone to an unseen President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his near desperation to get any old battleship or planes to Britain quiet, sad, solitary.  Oldman pulls back, not going into fits or rages or crying jags, but more a quiet desperation and terror and a hint of frustration, repeating an odd suggestion from FDR that Churchill could get the planes over to Canada by using horses to drag them across the border.

Churchill has been played by many exceptional actors: Albert Finney, Timothy Spall, Michael Gambon, Brian Cox, John Lithgow.  His distinct voice, cadence and mannerisms are easy picks for mimicry or parody, for if anyone understood the power of performance, it was Sir Winston.  Oldman however, never slips into farce or impersonation as Churchill.  In fact, I think the trailers for Darkest Hour might leave an impression that Oldman goes over the top.  It's actually a pretty strong and convincing performance, looking, sounding, and speaking so well as Churchill.

Oldman so towers over Darkest Hour that I think people forget the strength of others in the film.  Her role is small, but Kristin Scott Thomas holds her own as the loving yet strong Clemmie, the only person Winnie ever fears losing.  She is supportive but also unafraid, equally able to draw him out of his black moods of depression while reprimanding him for snapping at Layton on her first day.  Pickup as the dying Chamberlain and Dillane as Lord Halifax made a great team: they were not villainous and one could almost see their logic, even if it would mean that should Halifax had been Prime Minister, we could have ended up writing this in German rather than English.

It's a pity though that James' role is a bit limited in Anthony McCarten's script, and that Mendelsohn as His Majesty has only about three or four scenes.

Perhaps the Underground scene is a bit hokey, but one rolls with it because it was meant to tell us that Churchill was following the will of the British people and not sell out because the political class thought it knew best.  That scene is meant to rally us to his side, and it works.

Dario Marianelli's score is strong, setting the scenes well: when Churchill meets with His Majesty, it is slightly comic while still keeping with the dignity of the occasion.  Joe Wright put all these elements together so well that despite its two-hour length the film rarely if ever drags or feels padded.  In fact, the constant 'countdown' gives it an urgency, the days slipping by quickly as Britain teeters on the edge of collapse.

Darkest Hour moves both time-wise and emotionally.  Visually cinematic and unapologetically so, it adds to the Churchill legend while giving us signs of the man behind the myth.  Gary Oldman gives another standout performance and worth the price of admission alone.  Aided by strong work by Scott Thomas, it is a film that perhaps won't be the final word on Winston Churchill, but is, perhaps to misquote Sir Winston, a Fine Hour.

1874-1965

DECISION: A-

The Librarians: And the Bleeding Crown Review

THE LIBRARIANS: AND THE

BLEEDING CROWN

I had thought that the origins of The Librarian franchise was something that would be touched on in this season after watching the Fourth Season premiere story.  And the Bleeding Crown, the fifth episode, also touches on elements that the original TV movies that spun this series introduced, most importantly the fact that technically, it must follow the Highlander Rule: There Can Be Only One.  In this case, only one Librarian.  Now we are tackling something that might be a little more complicated than our main story.  And the Bleeding Crown, however, has nice moments of humor, even a bit of spoofing of fanboys but done in a nice way.

A town suddenly finds itself having aged to where everyone is now a senior citizen.  People in their 40s and their teen children are all of a sudden geriatric thus begging the question, what exactly happened to those in this town who were actually senior citizens.  Did they stay the same age or worse?  A question no one asked, let alone answered, yet I digress.

To investigate we get our Librarians: Jacob Stone (Christian Kane), Cassandra Cillian (Lindy Booth) and Ezekiel Jones (John Kim) along with their Guardian, Eve Baird (Rebecca Romijn) and the Head Librarian, Flynn Carsen (Noah Wyle).  Jacob in particular is not happy to be surrounded by the senior set (it looks like he appreciates antiques, but not those for whom said 'antiques' were originals back in their day).  As they pursue strange hooded creatures they find themselves saved by The Librarian, but it's not Flynn.

It's Darrington Dare (Samuel Roukin), a Librarian from the past who has magically arrived in the present.  Flynn, having read up on his predecessor, is seriously fanboying out, thrilled to be meeting his hero.

The other Librarians aren't big into Darrington Dare.  "What are we, backup dancers?" one of them asks while Flynn squees with delight.  We learn that Dare has been taken out of his time by his archnemesis, Ambrose Gethic (Howard Charles), who has obtained the Crown that belonged to Elizabeth Bathory, the 'Blood Countess' who allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins to maintain her youth.

Gethic has a similar idea, taking the energy from others through electricity, which everyone in town has.  Everyone except one family who had their power shut off, hence they were immune. 

Things become dicey when the other Librarians appear to be affected, having rapidly aged.  That, however, was all a ruse to draw Dare and Flynn out for a final confrontation.  Dare has taken both Flynn and the Library's Caretaker, Jenkins (John Larroquette) to task for having so many Librarians.  However, in the end it turns out that Dare's solitary man routine is not what saves the day.  Flynn, the eternal fanboy, must decide whom to save, and with a bit of ingenuity he saves both his friends and his hero.

Darrington Dare, Librarian, returns to his own time, and instead of dying on his 40th birthday as he had, Flynn's influence on him changes history.  He reconnected with his own friends, who helped him defeat his assassins back in 1888.  Now he lives to be 102 and served as Librarian from 1880 to his retirement in 1922.  However, he leaves a note to his successor, instructing him he must fix the situation of having One Librarian, One Guardian, One Caretaker.

Dare, from the great beyond, insists there can be only one.

And the Bleeding Crown has nice moments of humor, mostly coming from Wyle's childlike enthusiasm for meeting his hero.  It's almost as if The Librarians were having a bit of lighthearted fun at their fans when and if they meet the performers.  I think Wyle excels at the youthful enthusiasm of Flynn Carsen (even if in real life, the 46-year-old Wyle is older than his 'hero', as Roukin is a mere 37).  And the Bleeding Crown is, I think Wyle's best hour this season so far, his geeking out making Flynn a nice, comic and endearing figure.

Guest star Roukin got the dashing, daring Errol Flynn-like Darrington Dare (a name that evokes an almost swashbuckling persona).  The script allows Roukin to show Dare to be quite clever.

"You're from 130 years from the past," Flynn eagerly cries out.
"Correction," Dare retorts.  "I'm from the present.  You're from 130 years in the future".

Roukin handled the comedy well, playing his perhaps excessively grandiose figure straight, especially when he attempts to explain the 'difficult' concept of 'cloning' to everyone.

The hero-worship Flynn has for Dare is played up for laughs, as is the rivalry between Dare and Gethic.  As they duel with swords, exchanging 'witty banter', even Flynn finds it overdone.

"Oh my God, you're FLIRTING!" he exclaims.  "You don't care about good and evil!  You only care about fighting each other".

Perhaps the most important aspect of And the Bleeding Crown is that it is addressing something that some Librarian movie purists may have objected: how was it that despite having established that there was only One Librarian we had up to four Librarians working at the same time.  We learn a bit of Librarian history in the story of Balthus and Zharradan, 15th-Century twins who were co-Librarians only to have them turn bitter rivals and nearly wreck the Library in their war. 

Now, this issue of how The One Librarian will work when there are four (Flynn, Jake, Cassandra, and Ezekiel) will hopefully pan out and more importantly, allow for the cast to keep working together.

There are two things I object to about And the Bleeding Crown.  One is the make-up job when Eve and the 'backup dancers' become old.   That isn't a deal-breaker.  The other thing though, I have a bit of a problem with.  The term 'ageist' came to mind, as if suggesting that old age is something that is somehow not a good thing.  Something about that just did not sit right with me.

Still, I found And the Bleeding Crown a nice, humorous Librarians story, one with real substance on an unintentional knot and hopefully, on how to resolve that dilemma.      

8/10

Next Episode: And the Graves of Time

God In His Mercy Lend Him Grace. Fidel Gomez, Jr.: A Remembrance

1972-2017

Before this year officially ends, I need to pause briefly to reflect on one of the greatest personal losses I have had.  It is a blow that, four months later, I still feel very deeply.

My pastor has a saying: you are only a phone call from having your whole world turned upside down.  The Men's Ministry leader also has a saying: we are not guaranteed tomorrow.

Both of these are so true.  We wake up, have breakfast, if we're fortunate go to work, have lunch, continue working, and go back home before going to bed.  We make plans, sometimes short-term, sometimes long.  We believe ourselves assured tomorrow, especially when we are young and youngish.

We don't expect to be in that accident.  We don't expect to keel over clutching our chests.  We don't expect to stop breathing.  We live out our lives, not conscious of the fact that this day may be our last.  I think that is as it should be, otherwise we'd be in a perpetual state of fear.  Death is something that will come to us all, but it is not something we should dwell on.

Sometimes however, Death forces us to look at it.

On August 11, 2017, one of my closest friends, Fidel Gomez, Jr., died suddenly.

Just about every detail of Fidel's death is simply far too tragic and/or gruesome to share, and I know that he would not like much said and written about his life either. I have to balance paying tribute to him with respecting his right to rest in peace.

I think though, there are some things I can get away with with his approval.

I can share he never liked 'Fidel', because of well, you know.  Whenever we would get coffee, which was almost all the time and one of the bedrocks of our friendship, he would always give his name as 'Gomez'.  I can share that when we had coffee, we would spend hours and hours talking about anything and everything: our jobs, our families, our desires for relationships, Joy Division and Morrissey (whom we saw once together, with a 'Morrissey Birthday Party' being the rare time we'd hit a club).  It was an intimate relationship, as intimate as a relationship between two men can be without any sexual or romantic connotations.

Fidel and I met in college, if memory serves correct in the Radio/TV/Film Scripting class.  He was older than me and had been at UTEP before I got there, but graduated after me.  I guess he was what you'd call a 'permanent student'.  We bonded slowly over our mutual shyness and passion for films.  After he did graduate, we stayed friends before he disappeared, not returning or making contact for years.

It was only by the sheerest of coincidences that we reunited.  In 2014 I was going to Charleston and stopped at the Barnes & Noble to kill some time before going to the airport.  As I was leaving, I see Fidel sitting at a table.  I was thrilled to see him again, and I think he was happy too (Fidel didn't get thrilled by nature).  I tell him I'm about to leave but that I would call him when I got back.  When I came back, we picked up where we left off.

Neither of us could have thought we'd have just three years left, though I'm thankful they were three years of laughter, shock, deep conversations and contempt for bad films.

That was one of the things that held us together: we loved movies.  He got me to love Herzog and Fellini, and I got him to love Welles and Hitchcock.  We talked about Ebert & Roeper like some people talk about Game of Thrones.  We would go to the movies whenever time allowed, from the Alamo Drafthouse to the second-run theaters, always taking turns paying.

In fact, it took me a long time to even think about going back to the Alamo after his death.  It was always such a special place for us, almost 'our place', and I simply couldn't bear to go there alone, especially knowing he wasn't ever going to meet me there with a "Hello, Richard".

For reasons known only to him, he called me 'Richard'.  My friends call me 'Rick', my family calls me 'Richie', my parents call me 'Ricardo'.  He was the only person to call me 'Richard', and I never felt the need to have him call me anything else.

For me, however, our friendship was more than movies, though that was a big part of it.

I was able to open up with Fidel in a way I haven't with anyone.  He was more than my friend.  He was my confidant, the person I could talk about almost anything with.  I shared things with him I never shared with anyone, things that he did take to the grave.  I cannot say the feeling was mutual, but I had full trust that deeply embarrassing moments, private thoughts, and deep dark secrets and hopes were things I could share with him.

In a lot of ways, I think we were similar: both aspired to write, both knew the frustrations of not finding good work (though to be fair, I was blessed with a great job and he, sadly, wasn't), both marveled at how some people in Hollywood had careers when neither of us saw any discernible talent.

I know Fidel ultimately never fully opened up to me the way I did to him, though I too kept at least some things private.  I only wish I could have told him just how much he meant to me, how much I appreciated him and his friendship.  I wish I could have told him how special he was, how he always sold himself short, how many people genuinely cared for him.

I wish I could have...

I wish...

I miss him.  I just miss him.

I miss being able to share inside jokes, being able to have laughs about the people we knew and their idiosyncrasies. I am going to miss those little things: his frustration at having to pay for a 3-D screening of Gods of Egypt because he didn't check the screening times, his admitting I was right about CHIPS, his teasing me about how excited I was for Green Lantern, his imitation of me using a deep voice to talk about "the Criterion Collection" or how we in mock-tones would describe a film as "the most important film of this, or ANY generation".

The little things.

I also miss not being able to show him the original Murder on the Orient Express so that he could compare it with the remake.  I miss how we never got the chance to see Spider-Man: Homecoming together, a film he was completely opposed to seeing, even after I offered to pay.  After his death, I went to see it, alone.  There was simply nothing holding me back, but I watched it with a twinge of sadness, knowing full well that this was the first of many movies I would not be able to share with him.

He loved Blade Runner and I figure was looking forward to seeing Blade Runner 2049.  It tears at me that he never got the chance.  It tears at me that on August 11, the very day he officially died, I sent him a text asking if he was going to be able to go see Xanadu with me the next day at the Plaza Classic Film Festival as he had said he might, his work permitting.

I would never have imagined as I looked around, waiting to see if he would show up, that his remains were being carried out of his apartment.  I never thought as I was watching Xanadu, that my friend was never going to be there.

There hasn't been a week since his death where he doesn't comes to my memory, especially since I drive past the cemetery he is buried at whenever I go to work.  I think I can share that he would be both displeased and not surprised that he, who never learned to speak Spanish despite his name, would end up being buried less than five miles from the U.S./Mexico border.  I can hear his voice, again in mock-tone, imitating me in saying, "We are not amused".

His sister called me from his phone a week after his death to tell me he died.  That night, I had an uneasy sleep, and in the fits of sleep I managed, I had at least one short dream.

We were walking together when he made a sudden sharp right turn.  A barrier like a train crossing gate fell between us, and a figure suddenly stood alongside him.  This figure shook his finger, making it clear I could not come across, while Fidel just waved goodbye as they walked away.  I like to think that was his way of saying farewell, one last look before going.

After his death, I found that for how special he was to me, I had only one picture of us together.  It was taken when we went to a UTEP football game as a promotion.  I'm so glad I have it and treasure it, where it is displayed prominently.

To be honest, I haven't had the courage to see the DVD he lent me: a trio of war films that I never got around to.  Odd that the DVD now has a more special meaning: the last and only tangible thing I have left of him.

I feel his loss greatly, and perhaps I will as long as I am allowed to live by the Grace of God.  However, his death made me think about my own life, what I thought, where I was, how I was.  I am learning to appreciate each day I'm given, the friends I have (though few as close as he was to me).  I've learned to try new things, to break out of my routine and my shell.  I can't say that I'm starting an adventurous life, but I am learning to be less bound, both in what I try and in letting others define who I am. 

I know I have a limited life, and I don't want to leave it unexplored.

I figure that if Fidel read this tribute, he'd say it was too long, a bit sentimental, and using one of his favorite critiques of my writing, 'pretentious'.  Well, now let me end by coming round full circle, back to a memory of Charleston that came to me when I touched Fidel's casket and had the full impact of this great personal loss hit me hard.

One of the places I visited in Charleston after unexpectedly reuniting with Fidel was a plantation, Drayton Hall.  There, a descendant of the plantation slaves crafted an arch to the entrance of the slave cemetery.  On it are these words, "Leave 'Em Rest". I think that is as good a thought when it comes to Fidel now as can be given.

Whatever was buried with him should remain so.  There is so much I can share, but I know he wouldn't like it.  I'm not sure he'd like these reflections, but I want to share them because he was so very special to me.  I thought him fun and funny, smart, flawed, private, but a good, good friend, one I thought would be with me for years and years.

Goodnight and goodbye, my dear friend.

This is my tribute to my friend Fidel Gomez, Jr., someone I loved and will remember for as long as I have life & memory.

I leave you, my dear friend Fidel Gomez, Jr., rest.

IN MEMORIAM