Glass (2019)

Glass (2019): written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan; starring James McAvoy (Kevin Wendell Crumb), Bruce Willis (David Dunn), Samuel L. Jackson (Elijah Price), Anya Taylor-Joy (Casey Cooke), Sarah Paulson (Dr. Staple), Spencer Treat Clark (Joseph Dunn), and Charlayne Woodard (Mrs. Price):

In this sequel to 2000's Unbreakable, M. Night Shyamalan returns to his own private world of super-heroes, super-villains, and the ordinary people all around them. A very subdued Bruce Willis reprises his Unbreakable role as reluctant superhero David Dunn, 19 years older and now getting an assist from his now-adult son playing Oracle on the earpiece.

Samuel L. Jackson's Elijah Price -- aka Mr. Glass -- has been doped up in a psychiatric wing for the last two decades or so after Dunn handed him over to the police for his role in the deaths of hundreds. A third super-powered piece has been added, however -- James McAvoy's super-powered multiple personality/Alter The Beast from Split (2016). Dunn is on his trail for the kidnapping and murder of a couple of groups of teen-aged girls, racing the clock before The Beast kills his next kidnap victims, a group of cheerleaders.

M. Night Shyamalan manages some pretty interesting twists here, though many found them obnoxious or off-putting. His take on super-heroes seems to me to be a complaint against the homogenized corporate movie-super-heroes who took over the box office since the release of Unbreakable. Indeed, the first 'contemporary' superhero universe movie came out the same year -- Bryan Singer's X-Men (2000). 

M. Night Shyamalan's heroes and villains mostly have to obey the laws of physics, More importantly, he posits them -- especially his superheroes -- as Folk Figures about whom the classic superhero comic books were myths and legends once-removed. Does this mean that there's a sinister global conglomerate that seeks to control those with superpowers as if they were just some sort of product?

Well, we'll see. Glass may have a controversial ending, and M. Night Shyamalan as always does some things that seem, well, a little goofy. Nonetheless, this is a fine film both featuring and about superheroes, supervillains, and the idea that in a world of crushing media conformity, magic may still exist -- real magic, dangerous magic, and maybe the real hero of a piece doesn't become apparent until the very end. Highly recommended.

Planes and Proms

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013): adapted by Steve Conrad from the story by James Thurber; starring Ben Stiller (Walter Mitty), Kristen Wiig (Cheryl Melhoff), Kathryn Hahn (Odessa Mitty), Shirley Maclaine (Edna Mitty), Sean Penn (Sean O'Connell), and Adam Scott (Ted Hendricks): Affable 'adaptation' of James Thurber's very-short story goes very, very retro in its contemporary setting -- Mitty is a photo editor at Life magazine. And Life magazine is getting turned into a web-only project by evil corporate exec Adam Scott. It's as if portions of the script had been around since the 1970's! It makes for a fun movie, about as fun as the first adaptation with Danny Kaye. Ben Stiller keeps himself reined in for the most part, not piling the bathos upon his character too much. Lightly recommended.

Blockers (2018): written by Brian and Jim Kehoe; directed by Kay Cannon; starring Leslie Mann (Lisa), John Cena (Mitchell), Ike Barinholtz (Hunter), Kathryn Newton (Julie), Geraldine Viswanathan (Kayla), Gideon Adlon (Sam), Gary Cole (Ron), and Gina Gershon (Cathy): There are enough laughs in [Cock] Blockers to make it worth watching on a slow night. I'd have loved to be in the pitch meeting ("Three parents try to stop their daughters from losing their virginity on Prom Night!"). The movie generally walks the tightrope between 'Stupid parents!' and 'Crazy teens!' pretty well. John Cena is very funny. It helps that he looks like a cartoon, and that the movie takes advantage of this. Third-act sentimentality almost swamps the whole boat. Lightly recommended.

Die Hard 2 (1990): adapted by Steven E. de Souza and Doug Richardson from the novel by Walter Wager; directed by Renny Harlin; starring Bruce Willis (John McClane), Bonnie Bedelia (Holly McClane), Franco Nero (Esperanaza), William Sadler (Stuart), John Amos (Grant), Dennis Franz (Carmine), Fred Dalton Thompson (Trudeau), and Sheila McCarthy (Samantha): While Die Hard 2 lacks the verve of the original, it's still a solid action movie. The main problem is that even three villains don't add up to one Alan Rickman. Recommended.

Action Songs for Orphaned Children

Pitch Perfect: adapted by Kay Cannon from the novel by Mickey Rapkin; directed by Jason Moore; starring Anna Kendrick (Beca), Skylar Astin (Jesse), Ben Platt (Benji), Brittany Snow (Chloe), Anna Camp (Aubrey) and Rebel Wilson (Fat Amy) (2012): Surprisingly witty sleeper about college a cappela groups that's already become a cult hit

There's a certain amount of slightly subversive humour -- unlike Glee, the movie takes many of its comedy cues from Animal House -- in this, along with an awful lot of people in their late 20's and early 30's playing students ten years younger. Rebel Wilson steals most of her scenes as Fat Amy. Recommended.

　

The Kid: written and directed by Charles Chaplin; starring Charles Chaplin (The Tramp), Jackie Coogan (The Child), and Edna Purviance (The Woman) (1921): Chaplin's first self-written, self-directed feature made him the world's biggest box-office star. And it holds up today, with winning performances by Chaplin and then-6-year-old Jackie Coogan, who would go one from this to be one of the biggest child stars of the 1920's.

There's even a very odd dream sequence towards the end of the film, along with a lightning-quick wrap-up that pretty much encapsulates how quickly filmmakers ended their movies in the Good Old Days. And even if you don't like it, it's only an hour long! Highly recommended.

　

The Expendables 2: written by Richard Wenk, Ken Kaufman, David Agosto, Dave Callaham, and Sylvester Stallone; directed by Simon West; starring Sylvester Stallone (Barney Ross), Jason Statham (Lee Christmas), Dolph Lundgren (Gunnar Jensen), Jean-Claude Van Damme (Vilain), Terry Crews (Hale Caesar), Randy Couture (Toll Road), Arnold Schwarzenegger (Trench), Bruce Willis (Church), Jet Li (Yin Yang), Nan Yu (Maggie), Liam Hemsworth (Billy the Kid), and Chuck Norris (Booker) (2012): The classic 1980's action vibe starts to get drowned out about midway through this second Expendables movie by a seemingly endless series of unfunny metafictional guest appearances and comments.

It's not that one expects the movie to play things straight. But if you're going to drop jokes about the action movies the various actors have previously appeared in, it would be nice if they were funnier jokes. A Chuck Norris appearance isn't inherently funny. Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis crowded together in a SmartCar is funny, but the joke vanishes in the obligatory, overly long climax, which involves a lot of shooting and a lesson on why one doesn't bring a knife to a chain fight. Lightly recommended for action-movie fans; everyone else should steer clear.

Repeat

Looper: written and directed by Rian Johnson; starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Joe), Bruce Willis (Old Joe), Emily Blunt (Sara), Paul Dano (Seth), Jeff Daniels (Abe), and Pierce Gagnon (Cid) (2012): Watching Looper for a second time, I note its metafictional nature as a movie partially about other movies. I

n one scene, crime boss Jeff Daniels tells protagonist Joseph Gordon-Levitt that the clothes he chooses to wear have simply been adopted from movies, not real life. We hear writer-director Rian Johnson talking to himself.

Important intertexts? Shane, Pale Rider (itself tied back to Shane), Casablanca, Get Carter (right down to the drugged eye-drops), Blade Runner, and the Back to the Future trilogy(!), the latter for its Electra complex as much as for its time-travel. Oh, and The Twilight Zone episode entitled "It's a Good Life," with its super-powered child who sends bad people to "the cornfield." Though here it's a canefield. It's a dandy movie. Clouds are also important. Highly recommended.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Moonrise Kingdom: written by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola; directed by Wes Anderson; starring Jared Gilman (Sam Shakusky), Kara Hayward (Suzy Bishop), Bruce Willis (Captain Sharp), Edward Norton (Scout Master Ward), Bill Murray (Walt Bishop), Frances McDormand (Laura Bishop), and Bob Balaban (Narrator) (2012): Another one of Wes Anderson's tiny, nearly perfect miniatures, quirky as usual and humane.

The love of 12-year-olds Sam Shakusky and Suzy Bishop leads them to run away from home. Well, he runs away from his Khaki Scout Troop. But all this is happening on one of the small, rural islands near New York (so far as I can tell, anyway) in the mid-1960's, and there's a major storm rolling in.

The major players are Sam, an orphan whose foster family intends to send him back to Social Services; Suzy, a depressed outsider with a great love of reading and mascara; Police Captain Sharp, a lonely bachelor having an affair with Suzy's mother, played by Frances McDormand; Walt Bishop, played by Bill Murray in mostly buttoned-down mode (though when he gets really angry, he goes outside with a bottle of booze and chops down a tree); the Scout Troop who mostly view Sam as an annoying outsider; and Scout Master Ward, a math teacher who has poured all his energies and enthusiasm into scouting.

There's also a scouting jamboree taking place on a nearby island, Bob Balaban as the narrator, a dog named Snoopy, and a whole lot of canoeing and hiking and tent-pitching. Harvey Keitel makes something of a surprise appearance as the Head Scout, while Tilda Swinton appears as an officious Social Services employee who repeatedly refers to herself only as Social Services.

The whole thing plays out in that vaguely bemused Wes Anderson fashion. There are several big laughs, but the real point of these movies seems to always be the small ways in which the strangeness of the human condition is illuminated, generally without narrative judgment. There will be a climax of sorts, and some things will get resolved, but others will not be resolved. The kids, who have to carry a lot of the movie on their own, are real charmers, possessed of the deadpan seriousness that perhaps only teenagers can muster about themselves and their primary place in the world.

Much of the movie is shot in the autumnal glow of nostalgia or a Norman Rockwell painting, occasionally lit by lightning or obscured by rain. Most everyone turns out to be a decent person in the end, flaws and all. Nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Recommended.

Time Loop

Looper: written and directed by Rian Johnson; starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Joe), Bruce Willis (Old Joe), Emily Blunt (Sara), Paul Dano (Seth), Jeff Daniels (Abe), and Pierce Gagnon (Cid) (2012): Rian Johnson's Brick was an idiosyncratic gem, a high-school drama played like a hard-boiled film noir, complete with 1940's inflected dialogue and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in his first defining dramatic role after years on Third Rock from the Sun. Johnson and Gordon-Levitt re-team here for another genre-buster. Looper is at least nominally science fiction, but it's also a Western. And another crackerjack film noir.

The major influences for Looper seem to be Shane and that terrific modern noir of the early 1990's, After Dark, My Sweet (though that film was based on a Jim Thompson novel from the 1950's). Then throw in time travel and, um, telekinesis -- more specifically, Jerome Bixby's Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life." This is nothing if not a mash-up.

Organized crime in the 2070's sends its targets back to to the 2040's to be killed by a 'Looper.' Why? Something about bodies being difficult to get rid of in the 2070's. Frankly, this is the shakiest part of the premise. Some of the other problems with this use of time travel could be explained by the disintegration of organized government, which would explain why there aren't Time Cops running around the 2040's. But then, who's discovering the bodies in the 2070's?

We'll give them this as a starting point. The rest of the movie is pretty smart, with nice background details that sketch in the decaying America of the 2040's without throwing it in one's face. There's also an automated flying crop-duster that made me smile -- it looks like the country cousin of the Imperial Probe Droid from The Empire Strikes Back.

But having seen Brick before seeing Looper also helps explain certain things, as Looper is equally stylized and non-mimetic, if not anti-mimetic: for one, the stuff with Blunderbusses and Gats seems more like a commentary on movie gunmen than a realistic categorizing of weaponry. Because these guys are all carrying big guns with which they're only intermittently able to hit something other than their own feet.

The movie plays out with some deft twists, turns, and at least one major reset button. Time travel is a tricky thing. Bruce Willis, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt's future self, is tough and ruthless; Joseph Gordon-Levitt pulls off the difficult feat of playing a monster who develops a soul. He's developed into a fine actor. Pierce Gagnon does some fine child acting, and Emily Blunt pulls off an American accent. Time folds in upon itself. The rules the movie sets out for time travel make a sort of sense right up to the climax, at which point...well, you'll see. Recommended.

Bruce Willis vs. The Moon

Movies:


Moon, starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey, written by Duncan Jones and Nathan Parker, directed by Duncan Jones (2009): While it's no 2001, Moon is an intelligent and enjoyable science-fiction movie, an increasingly rare thing in these heady days of overwrought CGI and underwrought writing.

Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the only worker on a Lunar Industries moonbase on the far side of the moon tasked with mining Helium3 and shipping it back to Earth to power Earth's fusion reactors. Sam is only weeks away from the end of his three-year contract -- and a return to his wife and child on Earth -- when an accident leaves him wondering just what is really going on. The result is a tightly plotted science-fiction thriller with several surprises and a refreshing air of scientific verisimilitude.

Rockwell is fast becoming one of my favourite, slightly offbeat actors -- his Sam Bell is sympathetic and a bit wiggy, the latter perfectly understandable given his three-year isolation. Kevin Spacey lends his voice to GERTY, the base computer which knows...something. Spacey pitches his voice in HAL territory, leaving one wondering until the final scenes whether or not we have another homicidal computer on our hands. If you enjoyed the old Twilight Zone or the 1960's Outer Limits, you'll enjoy Moon's combination of existential dread, hope, and the joys of plot twists. David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, does a nice job of directing. Here's hoping he continues to make movies as enjoyable as this, and doesn't get sucked up into the Hollywood crap-making machine. Highly recommended.



Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Ving Rhames and James Cromwell, written by Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato from the graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, directed by Jonathan Mostow (2009): I'm not sure I'd call this a good movie, but it is fun. In a future world, cybernetics has advanced to the point that a person never has to leave his or her home -- a robotic surrogate, usually better looking than the original person, can do everything for you while you lie in a control chair, directing the surrogate's movements and experiencing whatever it experiences safely away from any possible harm. But then someone manages to murder a person by destroying his surrogate, and FBI agents Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell are called in to investigate. Ving Rhames shows up in a ridiculous dreadlock wig.

Bruce Willis's surrogate makes for some droll moments -- CGI de-ages Willis's face and gives him a full-head of somewhat ridiculous-looking blonde hair. The future society isn't drawn with enough care to be fully believeable (obviously, not everyone would be able to afford these things as they apparently do in the movie), but the metaphoric commentary on people and their avatars, whether those avatars are computerized or simply the fake faces we put on when we go out the door, is interesting and sometimes somewhat poignant. If you could live through a nigh-indestructible, better-looking version of yourself, would you? And would it be fair to criticize people who do so because of mental or physical problems? Recommended.