Tag Archives: Cinema Theatre

Watching Martha Marcy May Marlene and Margin Call at the Cinema

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I missed out on Martha Marcy May Marlene when it screened at The Little (240 East Ave.) a few weeks back, but I got a chance to see it at The Cinema TheatreMySpace link (957 South Clinton Ave.) as part of a double-feature with Margin Call.

I'll start with Margin Call and say just a little: it's the story of the 2008 financial meltdown convincingly told with a sympathetic eye to the people closest to the problem. It really only served to reinforce my opinion that the stock market is nothing more than gambling with no relevance to any real value in the world. It was good, solid entertainment.

Martha Marcy May Marlene plays out largely in flashback: the tale of a woman indoctrinated into a rural cult. I think most people watch the film as a sort of horror/thriller, exposing the layers of lies, power, and brainwashing that get an otherwise reasonable person to embrace completely absurd notions. But I guess I come from a weird perspective, and saw it as a tale that compares two cults: one at a rural farm, and the other, American industrialized society. When Martha (a.k.a. Marcy May as named by the cult leaders, or Marlene when any of the women answered the phone) is reacquainted with her sister Lucy, she returns to Lucy and her husband Ted's summer home (none of who utters reference to a "cult" as none either knows or believes it). She first showers and when she rejoins Lucy on a bed, Lucy says, "oh, you're dripping", referring to Martha's wet hair. Particularly given the more important things going on, why is this even remotely important?: it is the Lucy/Ted/American culture's set of arbitrary and irrelevant rules.

Like Kynodontas (Dogtooth) (which I saw at the Dryden), the film acts as a mirror to our own society. My culture's foundation is violence: if I don't do what I'm supposed to do, society responds with force (which may sound familiar, taken from Derrick Jensen's philosophy). For instance, if I decide that the house I have been living in (exclusively, for the last 12 years, and no other person has come by to claim it is theirs) is mine and I decide to no longer pay my mortgage, eventually someone will come with a gun and tell me I have to leave. That is the incentive for paying my mortgage. Of course, it's conditioned from an early age, so it doesn't seem like that's the reason, but it ultimately is.

I of course know the differences between my culture and the cult, but the lines were pretty severely blurred by the end of the film. It's kind of a "choose your own poison" kind of tale. Martha is a pawn in the game where she's either enslaved to pay for her existence, or, well, enslaved to pay for her existence. There's happiness and misery to be found in both places only at different times and in different forms. But ultimately she's asking the right questions: why do I have to?

Heading to the Cinema for The Big Year and Real Steel

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I ran a few errands early and wanted to go out late, leaving a big window of time. I stopped by The Cinema TheatreMySpace link (957 South Clinton Ave.) to see what was playing: The Big Year, and Real Steel. I had very low expectations about both films, but once in a while I like to make sure my off-the-cuff assessments agree with reality. I see a lot of intellectual movies, and seek out movies for cinephiles; I'll watch an otherwise boring movie if it has one exceptional element — great cinematography or something. But seldom do I go out for some mainstream popular film.

The Big Year stars Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Steve Martin. Each are trying for a "big year" — quoting the Wikipedia article, "an informal competition among birders to see who can see or hear the largest number of species of birds within a single calendar year and within a specific geographical area." The movie gets off to a poor start in my book with Black as Brad, a nuclear power-plant computer operator who provides expository voiceover to explain the movie. then we're introduced to Wilson as Bostick, the "reigning champion", and finally Martin as Stu who is trying to retire as CEO of a big company.

After the formulaic character introductions are established, the movie gets rolling to various attractive locales with a modestly good songs to go with it. Naturally each has a love interest. Stu gets the most realistically loving wife in JoBeth Williams. Bostick is also married, his wife played by Rosamund Pike who he treats like crap but she's too dumb to be anything but loyal for the sake of the story. Brad finds a love interest in Ellie played by Rashida Jones. (I found her super cute and could easily develop a fanboy crush.) The film blunders along with the species-count challenge fueling its underpowered engine until it finishes with a tidy, heartwarming ending. The movie was sufficiently weak that I found a highlight in a brief few scenes with Jim Parsons who plays Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory.

In all it's not atrocious as films go. I think it could be saved for a film nut like me by skipping the first 25 minutes or so: skip all the character introductions and exposition and jump right into the contest. It quickly becomes clear who's who and what's what, and I think it would make a better movie to figure it all out along the way.

Next was Real Steel which had pretty cool and seamlessly-integrated special effects. The setting is a few decades in the future where remote-controlled boxing robots are all the rage.  Hugh Jackman plays Charlie who likes to throw away money he doesn't have on junky fighting robots, only to have them thoroughly destroyed. He blankly reacts to the death of his ex-girlfriend as a vehicle to introduce his 11-year-old son Max (Dakota Goyo). A wealthy aunt and uncle are ready to adopt Max, but naturally Charlie gets to take him for a while and brings the kid into the world of robot boxing. It's a Disney kids movie so its plot is absent of surprises for adults as everything that is about to happen it tweeted half an hour in advance.

I find it surprising that people continue to flock to Disney movies like this. Charlie is a terrible guy, and a worse father. He's a drunk, introduced in his cargo truck stumbling over beer bottles (although for the sake of the kids movie he never acts drunk, drinks much, nor does anybody smoke). He steals money from a guy who is later tagged a "bad guy" for tracking him down and beating him a bit to get it back. He drags the kid through all kinds of life-threatening danger. He extorts the aunt and uncle for money by pretending to want to adopt Max in court. And he's abusive to his love-interest Bailey (Evangeline Lilly) — who naturally stays loyal (pay attention, girls, Disney is speaking to you!)

The best I can say about the movie is, "it's kind of cool looking". The computer graphics animation is always completely seamless, giving the illusion of these big robots being present. But that's pretty much it.

I'm trying to remember anything from Real Steel that made me want to care about the movie or any of the characters. The Big Year at least had a few sweet moments in it, and it's probably redeemable by skipping a bit. I may contemplate an alternative home-movie screening where I pick movies that may be salvageable in that manner — perhaps a shortened double-feature night … hmm …

Dinner and a Movie with Ali

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Ali and I tried out that whole dinner-and-a-movie deal — the one where you can get free tickets for The Cinema TheatreMySpace link (957 South Clinton Ave.) for everyone at your table at Highland Park Diner (960 S. Clinton Ave.) if you spend at least $12.50 each. It's not that the Cinema is all that expensive, but it was a good excuse to spend a little more than usual on dinner. After all, even though Highland Diner is pricier than average, it's still kind of hard to spend that much per person.

The first film was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which Ali enjoyed more than I did. The thing I always enjoyed about the series is the way that the highly improbable circumstances are at least physically possible — it's set in the past of our daily world with a twist that there's a bit more magic and ancient booby traps continue to function flawlessly. In the latest installment, however, the action is just too far beyond unlikely: getting blown-clear from a nuclear blast, or going over a waterfall and surviving completely unscathed, for instance.

I also condemn the film for having internal inconsistencies indicative of a changing script. In one instance, Jones has strong knowledge of an unusual artifact but later claims he was kept in the dark and knew nothing. That artifact was supposed to be magnetic — able to deflect hanging lights from tens of feet away — but could be easily loaded into a steel Jeep. I also recall at least one instance where a character starts arguing with another, but that argument was almost edited out, and in the next shot, they're all fine again.

Ali had to skip Hellboy II: The Golden Army but I went back to see it. I liked it a lot more than Indiana Jones. I wasn't all that keen on it being so comic-book-like because some of the scenes would have worked as a comic book panel — where your imagination fixes the incongruities as if in a dream — but when rendered in film-form, they're shown to be rather absurd. That said, the dialog is snappy, funny, and overall the film is just fun to watch.