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The strong parts of this movie are its dedication to historical accuracy from what I know about the westward expansion of the US. From things like weapons, saddles, uniforms, logistics, language, and music, this movie absolutely cuts no corners, and it's the charming part of this movie along with its range of emotion, much distinct from contemporary movies with lead characters that show a clinically depressed flat affect. For history buffs this will be a great movie to watch.

I'm worried that appeal doesn't extend beyond that audience though. I love what Costner is trying to do here, give not only a both sides take on the American West, it shows the breadth of human experience during that period in US history. The movie is certainly an epic so we see a collection of stories that spans the Southwest all the way to Montana.

What this movie will make you realize is how people were just surviving until the 20th century, life being much much harder than our indoor, luxurious lives relative to theirs. Basic needs aren't always guaranteed. I was pleased with details like the pace and mentality of a wagon train moving west, the leader reiterating to men in his crew that they do 14 hours of moving a day, they stick to that and it's how they survive.

The movie felt like an old western, complete with its optimism about the country's expansion in the 19th century. What was noticeable was the lack of cynicism or brutality that's in vogue when making westerns, Tarantino style affairs that accentuate the bleakness and dark side of that era.

I also appreciate the scale of the movie, particularly including Native American scenes with dialogue in their language, and no white settlers to be seen. You saw a wider range of their lifestyle and concerns, also how they governed themselves distinct from the European settlers.

Overall I felt this was a first installment that just didn't do as well as it could in setting up some excitement for the next chapter. I get the feeling the second chapter will be much stronger, and having to separate these two parts into two movies is a weak part of how this movie will be received.

If your view of 19th century white settlers is unredeemingly negative, you will not like this movie. And I'm worried that in today's political climate, its strengths won't make up for this contemporary faux pas of not making white Americans in the 19th century the perennial antagonists, while Native Americans are given a more sugarcoated treatment.

If you're looking for examples of the darker side of Native Americans at this time in US history, read about what the Commanches did to Cynthia Parker's family in Texas, and that was just one story of many. "Empire of the Summer Moon" is a great longer read to learn about Commanche brutality, and give a window into a fuller narrative about the 19th century in America.

As a moderately strong fan of the Terminator franchise who was disappointed by the last two installments, I was skeptical of the latest that came out last week. Two Arnolds? More time traveling cris-crosses? Kyle Reese again? When it's all said and done though, I'd say it worked as a middle of the pack movie amongst the five that make up the franchise.

The story begins minutes before the battle referenced in the first Terminator movie occurs where John Connor and Kyle Reese along with the human resistance army are defeating the machines in a final skirmish to end the war. Reese is sent back exactly as it happened in the first movie, though there's a glitch where Connor is attacked seconds before he travels back to 1984. This attack changes all of what happens next, similar to what was done in the Star Trek reboot a few years back. Same characters, different plot. This technique has become the weapon of choice when trying to please old and new audiences with a reboot of a popular franchise. Sarah Connor is not the one we know from the first movie, she's waiting with Arnold as the Terminator with her to kill his machine clone and save Kyle Reese. A T-1000 unit is also after them which they're ready for and easily dispense with. Things are different though when Reese recalls a memory from his new childhood past (the past and future are now different that Connor was attacked), and has to convince Sarah to change their travel date.

The main tension of the movie is between Reese and Sarah Connor, which is a welcome change to the previously bleak and macho takes on the story in 3 and 4. Kyle Reese always struck me as one of the better characters along with Sarah Connor, and they work somewhat well together in this movie. Jai Courtney doesn't deliver the performance Michael Biene does, neither great actors for the part (though I liked Courtney in Divergent), and the crucial miss for him is in the youthful sadness of Reese having to grow up in a war ravaged future that Biene did a good job of portraying in the first movie.

The story jumps to three different time settings, which could be confusing for some audiences, and wins the movie the award for most time traveling for a Terminator movie. The tension between soldier Sarah from the 80s, soldier Kyle Reese from the future, and our time is possibly the most interesting part of the movie. The film struggles, though, with what issue it wants to take on from our time and ends up settling for a bland mix of top of mind issues like social media, cellphone ubiquity, and homeland security. On this front, the story offers nothing new for audiences and is one reason why it's receiving poor reviews.

Where it does work though, is in the relationship of Sarah and Kyle now having to live with each other and be pressured to fall in love after knowing they're supposed to give birth to John Connor. At best, the relationship is a love story of two people thrown in together who want to have an attraction and certainly do, but pressures from multiple fronts complicate and threaten that. This is a very relatable aspect of the movie.

The part that doesn't work is the heavy-handedness of the feminism injected in the movie (another common issue movies in our time tackle that has become stale) that seems like a message about both abortion choice and career choice for women. The emergence of this theme in the movie points toward the preponderance of it in the movies of our time, and to further prove the point, just look at the media hype around Mad Max and Jurassic World. For Terminator Genisys, though, this theme comes across as boring and awkward for the couple.

Overall the movie is a welcome addition to the franchise though it's unlikely the movie will regain the greatness of the first two installments. Mad Max will be the critical reboot winner of the summer while Jurassic World will be the popular one. I'm OK with how this ended up.

Global warming! Political unrest! Corruption! Despair! Sadness!

These are the ailments of the story of Tomorrowland, and the proposed solutions to them are as heavy-handed as they appear above.

The story is about a teenage girl, Casey (Britt Robertson), who holds herself to be fearless, ambitious, and incredibly bright. She is one of the few optimists left in a world (much like ours today) that is wallowing in despair over dystopian nightmares being realized and where the melting of the ice caps is both figurative and literal. And what's worse, she's the only one to think that there is a solution to all the world's ailments. She is "recruited" by a young girl from Tomorrowland, who shows her a glimpse of an alternate dimension where the best and brightest of the world gather and build a utopian society, or so they think. The problem is that they stopped recruiting when they saw that the world will end using technology they created that could predict the future, or at least see one version of it. In other words, they've given up hope in fixing our world. Frank (George Clooney) was one of their citizens that spoke out against this policy and was banished. He is put together with Casey and they travel to Tomorrowland to stop the world from ending in a matter of months, told by Frank's homemade doomsday clock.

Tomorrowland is a movie that runs on nostalgia and underlying it is a bankrupt moral philosophy on solving the world's problems. Imagine the philosophy underlying TED talks (technology, engineering, and design will solve the world's problems) making a movie for children to watch and be inspired to adopt their meta solution to the world's ailments. The solution is that we don't have enough "dreamers" working together building innovative and well-designed inventions. People don't believe they're special enough, and they give in to their sadness and don't believe in themselves.

What's painfully missing from Tomorrowland is any conscience. Even tonight before I saw the movie I had a conversation with a friend over "Jurassic World" coming out this summer and my fears on what they might do to the story. In the worst case, they make the movie about dinosaurs. In the best case, they carry the theme of the relationship of science and morality that upheld the first movie so well and showed the terror that innovation without a conscience (that word even means "with science" though I know it wasn't coined with that in mind per se) brings.

The only vices in our world, according to Tomorrowland, is being uninventive and a pessimist. Ironically, the movie revels in cliché after cliché, hoping we'll be wowed by the mediocre spectacles that are references to older future-chic tropes.

The theme that runs throughout the movie and eventually shows its own superficiality and impotence is the value of raw optimism. I'll contrast this to the virtue of grit which is the far more superior trait to hold. Optimism is simply being positive where grit is more akin to courage. One is a formation of outlook, the other is drive. Certainly Casey is optimistic, but where the movie gets it wrong is saying that's all we need.

Also there's the assumption that raw talent is what we have as the resource to tap for solving the world's problem. And with this view it shows that there are the gifted dreamers, then there's everyone else. Where the movie is misleading is in how it tells young viewers that believing in yourself and being special is all you need to solve these age-old problems the world is fraught with. Our time is terrible and we need optimists. What Casey never does in the movie, and what any inventor or great thinker will tell you about genius is that it takes a lot of work. They fail. They fail a lot, and they get up and they edit their work. They learn from their mistakes and they build a better invention next time. They learn when to scrap a project, and when to stick with it. Learning that virtue will serve our young people better than mere optimism. Certainly optimism is a part of it, though it's only one facet to a complex set of character traits.

The problem is that Casey never fails in the movie. If anything she waltzes into every situation and seems to know more than everyone else, and she never has to work at anything. You never seen any of her inventions (though she does have a cool security camera disrupting drone she uses), you never see her take a crack at something and it not work. She just bulldozes into situations with overconfidence that smacks of arrogance and somehow the inept adults in the story never thought of incredibly obvious solutions to problems in the story.

In the end, Tomorrowland falls too short to be called anything worth watching. The story has too many uninteresting characters with a plot that doesn't pick up and when it finally does you ask yourself, "Is that it?" You'll feel cheated, much like you would if you thought optimism will solve the world's problems.

I couldn't help but think of St. John Paul II's description of the culture of death, and how it kills a civilization either slowly or very quickly. Peter Kreeft, following on this line, said the the Third Reich was supposed to last a thousand years but only held for over a decade simply because it chose to build itself through killing its own. A similar note rings throughout Mad Max: Fury Road as we are presented with a story of humanity at a crossroads in figuring out how to rebuild itself after a profound era of destruction.

The movie tells the story of a group of women who escape a Viking-like primitive civilization in search for freedom from slavery as prizes for a select group of men in her culture. Civilization as we know it now has dramatically fallen and gangs of primitive tribes form around a culture of gasoline and cars, manipulating them and extracting all their worth as their dependence on it will eventually fade. Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) leads a group of harem-like women out of their desert city as Max (Tom Hardy) gets reluctantly drug into their escape, merging goals of finding a way out to freedom.

The relationship of men and women, one that's crucial to the survival of a civilization, is at the core of "Mad Max: Fury Road." What the movie presents are two extremes of the sexes in relation to each other, one given a very bad depiction in its harsh expression (and rightfully so), and the other in a more subtle though inevitable retreat into nothingness. The city Furiosa and Max escape from is nothing more than a slave state with a despot that controls his people through water distribution. He chooses a group of women to be his harem and that's that. Later in the film we're presented with a rival tribe composed of only women and hostile to all men that come their way (they're even laying bait and hunting them). This too, will not sustain a civilization. The obvious necessity for any civilization to thrive is a way to produce stable homes for children, and a culture that threatens that (and there are plenty of ways that that can be threatened) will destroy itself, especially if it rejects this necessity.

The two main characters, Max and Furiosa, are a microcosm of this tension between the sexes, grappling for power but working together toward the same goal, freedom from a destructive society, both struggling with the negative tendencies of their sex.

There are few movies that I've felt such anxiety over the pursuit of an evil and terrible gang of villains, seeing what they do to those who oppose them. The terror they're threatening throughout the movie is almost debilitating, and thankfully there are a few moments where we have respite from it. A parallel exists today in ISIS, which I couldn't help but think of throughout the movie. It's a terrorist society built on religious extremism and is notorious for brutality toward women and their enemies, and unapologetically so. The depiction of these gangs roaming and destroying what they wish is likely similar to what's being done by ISIS in our time, which puts a weight on other societies to act on it in some way.

Religion itself in the movie is given a lot of screen time, and in very interesting ways. The religion of Furiosa's society mimics the pagan religion of the Germanic tribes of ancient northern Europe with references to Valhalla, and their warrior emphasis. Men are brought up from birth as soldiers, and the society is built around war and plundering. Characters in the movie routinely pray (some to an unknown god) and reference the afterlife, which in a sense is a welcome addition to the film, giving characters in the movie a more interesting arc and drive. Some will interpret this as a vestige of primitive societies that more "advanced" ones will grow out of (and there is certainly the existence of childish religions), however it's not clear that the filmmakers are saying that.

For the first half of the movie, Max is portrayed as a selfish and very distant renegade, all the while carrying hallucinations from a past trauma. In this, I welcome an actual "madness" to Mad Max, something I was always wondering about the older movies. Max just seemed like a tough guy, nothing really mad (meaning crazy) about him in the older films. This movie takes it more literally in the sense that he's suffering from a psychological ailment throughout the movie, and it comes up repeatedly. This adds an interesting handicap to Max, and a more visible struggle he's working through as he escapes the tribe trying to kill him.

All in all, the movie is a fun ride, a tense one, and it delivers. Other reviewers have called it a much-needed shift for action movies in our time, especially as the Fast and Furious style films run their course. This movie carries with it a feel of mythology and universality, something any Jason Statham movie probably couldn't convey as well. As I write this, news of more Mad Max movies are on the way, and I hope they hold this theme of civilization building, stripping it down to its chrome shell and seeing how long it will run on a certain frame.

This movie does not contain any explicit nudity or foul language, though the violence is intense and gory.

After seeing Avengers 2: Age of Ultron, I discovered a trick of the Marvel franchise: make as many fights happen in the sky as possible in order to increase the stakes of that fight. It's the looming fall that makes every fight on a floating city more dramatic, and it's in many ways similar to the looming fall that superhero movies as a whole are facing for the near future as they find their peak and descend as a passing trend.

I have to admit that going into this movie I was 80% expecting it to disappoint, probably due to a personal burnout that is likely a foreshadowing of a collective burnout for the genre in the years to come (if it hasn't started to peter out already). I predict the late 2010s to be the waning years of superhero movies, and the solidified polarization in big budget blockbusters and small art-house/indie films made for those willing to seek them out.

Avengers 2: Age of Ultron falls on the farthest opposite end from anything art-house, however, and it's likely one of the best of that ilk.

The movie delivers on surprises, tense moments, loss, and laughs. In many ways, it's an almost identical experience to the last one, which begs the question of where we go from here. Do the movies keep creating new characters and digging deeper into plot lines with obscure references from the early days of the franchise? Do we eventually lose our senior class and get a whole new set of characters (and the actors that play them) that probably want to move on and diversify their careers?

I get that feeling watching this movie, though I have to tip my hat to Marvel Studios for keeping the spirit alive and doing about the best the could with these comic book characters. Really, a cultural mythology like this couldn't ask for a better revival than what the Marvel universe has given it.

For those who loved the first one, you'll like this one just as much or slightly less. They spent less time on explaining some of the events of the movie, possibly to its detriment. If you love explanations of the magic stones and the technology of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, then you'll be disappointed because they do a lot that isn't explained well in the movie.

Characters we love return, and it was tastefully done, avoiding the temptation to cater to the super fans and start name-dropping more obscure heroes to get cheap wows from the audience.

For Catholics and religious folks in general, there's a presence of spirituality in the movie that falls in line with the growing suspicion toward religion in general we're finding in movies of this size. This is seen in Ultron using the most explicitly religious language, "On this rock I will build my church" and "Have you come to confess your sins?" Yes, the villain utters those lines in the movie, showing himself to be a false Christ figure, with other allusions to the End Times and the tragic ending of the human race peppered throughout the movie. There's a borrowing from (conscious or not) religion in these movies because the language is both potent and familiar though it seems films have turned more suspicious toward religious figures, opting for a broader (and often far more bland) expression of a nebulous goodness and spirituality.

I admire the Thor character and his story most for his nod to the mystery of another world that has influence on our own. Thor's addition to the Avengers story acknowledges a spiritual dimension in the world, even if it doesn't fall directly in line with Judeo- Christian traditions. He holds sway over the rest of the Avengers as a god and the only god on the team, and stands out as an entity that emanates the divine though in a more pagan sense. This is best seen in a comical part of the movie where the entire team tries to lift his hammer, and the bickering that ensues when they can't they argue over how the mechanism works. Thor seems most comfortable leaving it as a test of worthiness, saying it's something beyond us to manipulate or understand (though I'm sure it's explained in his comic book storyline).

Also notable is how the movie conveys a global feel, adding to my thesis that movies will either become big big blockbusters made for global audiences (with sometimes heavy handed pandering to that global audience), or become culturally esoteric art-house films. Knowing that Chinese audiences are the biggest source of money for these movies outside of the US, the film puts a few Chinese characters into the movie speaking the language and having a prominent role. Later, we're taken to Africa where another fight breaks out, and finally to somewhere in Eastern Europe, and by the end we're not sure exactly where we are in the world.

In the handful of reviews I skimmed for Avengers 2, I saw one insight from a review that aptly pointed out the future for the movie industry. It was summed up in two similar though very different recent releases. "Ex Machina" came out a few weeks ago and features a set of four actors on a single location making a story about an artificially intelligent machine made by a genius. In many ways, it's another take on Age of Ultron though it couldn't be any more different. The movie is powerful, thoughtful and moving though in ways Avengers 2 isn't nor would ever attempt to be (and wisely so). Basically one is a movie and the other is a film, assuming the tone that goes with each of those labels.

That difference is the near future of film, and I don't find it as grim as many portend it to be.

Ex Machina falls into the same category of sci-fi thrillers that love to frame the "God question" in unique terms (and our history with God can undergo quite a few adaptations and still hold up well), and it raises questions and problems that a conversation about God should include. "Prometheus" was a similar movie though Ex Machina is far less heavy-handed, and far more interesting. What failed in "Prometheus" was how they depicted the religious character as superficial, generic, and unable to assert or apply anything about her faith to the situation. She merely kept her faith as if it were this defensive fortress to keep out any uncomfortable truths in what she experiences, as if what it means to "keep the faith" is to solely hold to it in the face adversity. Faith is far more resilient, enriching and applicable than that though it's common to run into people with that view. Ex Machina wisely removes an overtly religious character and let's the characters think and feel without as many labels that bring in tired tropes with societal baggage we'd like to leave behind.

Ex Machina is full of allusions to the Bible's Creation story with a Garden of Eden setting, characters named Nathan and Caleb (different parts of the Bible than Genesis but we get the idea), and a "first machine" named Ava, which is clearly an allusion to Eve. This is nice because it's somewhat sympathetic to the story though it takes it in a direction that departs from our story with God at the beginning. The conversations between Nathan and Caleb are fascinating as they frame and raise questions on what it means to be human and what our ability to create artificial intelligence means. When Caleb starts to realize he's attracted to Ava he at first remains distant from his attraction, but Nathan prompts him and like a blunt therapist he reveals Caleb's feelings for her. Nathan, we find out, is not as passive to the process (and the outcome) as he shows himself to be.

Caleb at one point after he comes clean with Nathan about his attraction to Ava, wonders why Nathan gave the machine a gender. His response is one to think about, saying that it's part of what we are, and he goes on to criticize in a unique way the common view of gender being a mere social construct. It's a good point, and he highlights that in creating humanity, our sexuality is central to who we are as both an identifier, a way of relating, and a way of being, not something we can discard or dismiss as socially assigned and ultimately transitory and malleable. In the end, my take on Nathan's stance was that it's far more interesting and true to create a human with a sexuality and that it's an inextricable part of our existence.

When Caleb first finds out what he's there for, he's overjoyed at the prospect of being the first to meet Ava. Nathan however, shows part of his perverted view of himself when he says something along the lines of "This is the greatest technological achievement in history" where Caleb responds, "This isn't the history of men, it's the history of gods." Personally, I love these kinds of lines in movies because they bring us into a different place of thinking about what's happening. We step outside ourselves and look and observe what's happening and what we're doing. The question is, are we gods if we make artificial intelligence? Or better yet, are we like the Abrahamic God when we do that?

Yes, and in the same way our unique creativity is a reflection of God. I think they hit on something, though, that's wonderful and unique about humans in that we make new things, we create, and it's not in a way that an animal builds a nest. As Chesterton said, it's not the case that the paintings that birds make are bad, while man's work is better. Birds don't make paintings. No creature does in the way that humans do.

And yes, we are like God in the sense that make things for their own sake, though at this line in the movie it's revealed what kind of background Nathan is creating and it goes from here to become more of a thriller. Nathan comes back to Caleb and says, "I like what you said when I told you about Ava, you said 'You're not a man, you're a god.'" Caleb tries to correct him but Nathan doesn't listen. With this line, we're watching the Fall of mankind happen in a modern setting, though in this instance it's revealed that the god is fallen and the creatures must be skeptical and try to escape.

Nathan's line is reminiscent of what God said when He saw the Tower of Babel or what the serpent tempted Eve with in the Garden, "You will be like gods." That was the temptation, and when we were assigned as stewards of the Garden of Eden, we perverted that "Image of God" identity into a take on our own little godlikeness though it's a rebellious and self-serving one which led to our banishment.

The movie takes its turn here where Ava and Caleb fall in love, and she raises suspicion in Caleb toward Nathan as to what his intentions are. The movie does a wonderful job of suspending the mystery of why Nathan really has Caleb there, and what Ava really wants from Caleb (and particularly whether she really is in love with him). I imagine there will be a wide spectrum of belief on both fronts as people watch it, though by the end it's clear what's happening.

This is the most refreshing, and downright best movie I've seen in 2015 so far. After having been in theaters every weekend at least for one new release movie, Disney's Cinderella has delivered the best performances and all around film I've seen since December.

The story is exactly as we know it with a few extra bits and rabbit holes with certain characters, but overall the plot points are the same. What's remarkable is how it's a fairy tale that isn't revisionist. Fairy tales in recent memory have become either poor reproductions that are straight to DVD quality, or they're dark revisionist that offer the "true" or "real" story of whatever fairy tale it is, as if audiences ever thought these things happened as they were told to happen in the original. Chris Weitz, however, writes in the same spirit of the original, with all the best Disney studios has to offer, and with surprising restraint.

Performances on all counts are excellent, and nearly all scenes that seek to carry a tone or mood do exactly what they intend. The star of the show, as she should be, is the actress that plays Cinderella. I was completely convinced by her humble, courageous, and gorgeous presence in the film. In every scene of joy she emanates that emotion, and in every scene of grief you feel it. I have yet to see a better actress play the part, and her performance here will define the image of Cinderella for this generation.

But onto the story. The movie offers a full, unflinching account of the loss of Cinderella, something previous takes of her have glossed over for either darker ends, or to seemingly avoid being too dark (I'm thinking of the animated 1950 Disney production). This movie shows her connection to her mother and father, and the pain she feels at losing them. There are adult emotions here, even if they are simple, but the beauty is in seeing a character feel it all, and with utter courage and humility.

The heart of what makes this movie work, however are in the emotional depth of the full story of Cinderella, particularly the loss of her parents and thus her stabilizing family structures. And it happens to her at a young age. What makes it worse for her is that her stepmother treats her poorly, being outright abusive toward her in several ways. Surprisingly this hasn't been done in a movie depiction of Cinderella to my knowledge, and it adds a whole new facet and power to the movie. Without it, you have the story of her meeting the prince and that being what "saves" her. This movie tells it as her overcoming the debilitating loss of her parents who she loved tremendously. This aspect of the movie will make it appealing to audiences outside of the young adult range.

As I watched the movie, I couldn't help but think how this movie will annoy feminists of a certain strand. The protests will go like, "She depended on the prince to be saved" or "She didn't assert herself enough, thus she is a bad model for young girls and women of all stripes." I couldn't disagree with them more. Cinderella's strength lies in her purity of heart and her humility, and it has a refreshing take on virtues and habits women can take on other than the usual "strong" traits like assertiveness and power plays. She's basically a saint princess in the vein of St. Therese of Lisieux with small tasks done with all her heart, and the loving acceptance of having to live with annoying roommates. She is patient, persevering, and forgiving. Those are deeper and more lasting virtues for women than mere assertiveness.

I can't help but think on certain points that I haven't seen in movies like this, that her stepmother's behavior could easily be identified as abusive, and CPS could come in and find a better home for her as a solution. While these are remedies for real life problems, they don't solve the emotional hurt that happens through life in an unstable or abusive home. And on a more minor level, we're faced with obstacles and annoyances every day, and the question is the life of holiness is played out more in those moments than the big ones simply because there's less seeming reward and they are far more common. Cinderella is a wonderful story for a generation whose families have failed them more than previous homes, a generation where parents leave, divorce, and children become objects in the swap.

Having a small background in psychology and therapy, I noticed that they don't have a kind of "process" for Cinderella to work through in dealing with the pain from her loss. This could be seen as a weakness or one of it unrealistic and misleading parts, but what it has to say about it is that we're not bound to a set of "process behaviors" because of what's happened to us. We still have a choice to forgive someone, and it's OK to walk away from them. I noticed that immediately at the end of the movie. She leaves her stepmother's house and moves on, never returning. If that were real life, I'm sure there would be some in the kingdom that criticize her for abandoning her stepmother after she went into royalty, and would see it as a contradiction to say she forgave her yet left her after going away with the prince. But it is forgiveness. Cinderella shows courage in absolving her stepmother of her wrongs to her, and leaves it at that. There's something to be said for that, and a powerful wisdom that's understated in the movie.

The story is of a future not too far from now where in South Africa crime becomes nearly unbearable for an average police department to handle, so one company comes in with a talented young engineer (Dev Patel) who designs a set of robots that operate as an (almost) artificially intelligent set of police robots. Nothing new there. The interesting part of the plot comes when he creates the "program" for consciousness and self-awareness and puts it into one of the robots that was recently damaged from a firefight. The program of course works, however he's captured along with the robot by criminals who have come to hate these police robots, but get the idea to kidnap the guy who made the machines in order to gain an advantage against them. The problem is that the consciousness program he applies to the robot isn't one where you merely give orders and they do it, the change is that the robot now is basically like a child growing up and must be taught, and the criminals are now put in the position to "raise" Chappie to do what they want him to do, with mixed results.

The strong point is the topic, and particularly the psychology of the self-aware robot. He's a child with "parents" in a sense who don't really want him and everyone else seems to put an agenda on the robot without recognizing his personhood (in varying degrees), thus objectifying him. These scenes are powerful and worth seeing. I found myself moved by the interaction of the criminal "mother and father" with Chappie. The father doesn't want him around and treats him poorly while the mother takes on a caregiver role but "parents" him with endearing ignorance of what's best for him. There's a natural adoption that happens from all sides, and there's a clear power to the depiction of Chappie's innocence and trust, especially after we see it broken like it was inevitably going to be.

And most interesting are the scenes with the engineer, the "maker", and Chappie. He has a special love for Chappie that the robot senses and knows, and there are a few good scenes where they talk about that, loving and accepting love from his maker, that carry some weight. In a way the movie takes on big questions, creates characters, puts them together, and it does a decent job of showing us ourselves and the existential questions we carry.

Hugh Jackman is possibly the most painful to watch and the most pigeon-holed of them all because of his obvious negative portrayal of "right-wing religionists" that reminded me of the villains in James Cameron's Avatar (2009) though in that portrayal there wasn't as much religious reference. It's like a stereotypical hawkish conservative that many on the left think is lying dormant in every person registered with the Republican Party. And they must do all they can to fight against them in order to prevent the destruction of society by the threat of imposed theocracy from the right.

Another familiar trope is the often seen false dichotomy of the close-minded religious ideologue vs. the open-minded scientific one that dominates many conversations about religious and political discussion without examination. Jackman plays foil to the engineer (Patel) as this fanatical, militaristic, religious, narrow-minded beefcake that randomly references church and makes the sign of the cross here and there, and seems to cause all the problems due to his wrong-headedness.

Religious symbolism exists in the movie, but watching it as a faithful Catholic is painful due to its ostensible attempt at being fair about it. The protagonists are not religious and this doesn't feel like a unintentional move on the writer's part. Several characters make the sign of the cross (male criminal who adopts Chappie genuflects before his rifle right as he's about to go on a heist, which to some extent I appreciate for its honesty because that's really what he worships) and it raises the nuisance of religious symbology without the next step of thinking on where those signs came from. Does it make sense that what the cross represents, a sign of sacrifice, love, and selflessness be done by a criminal to his rifle? Not really, which isn't exactly a thing that happens only in movies. The cross is used in all sorts of odd and perverse ways in movies and in real life. What come across though is a kind of lazy way of saying that this is what he worships while it could've been said in a much more indirect and clever way to say that we idolize things of this world over God.

And as far as graphic violence and nudity, there's plenty of violence( and one very violent and graphic scene) but for the most part it's fairly tame compared to movies that want to show utterly depraved individuals that has become a kind of one-upmanship among filmmakers to make the darkest possible villiains (and heroes for that matter). The criminal couple, Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser are a South African couple that got started as a rap group and moved to the screen, and do a pretty good job of it. I was sold on the authenticity of their role in the film, and I loved the style they brought to the movie that felt like a Blade Runner and late 80s neon chic mashup. Their "home" was fascinating and great to watch, giving Chappie's "nativity" a genuine feel that worked.

In the end, the movie doesn't deliver much more than a fun one-time viewing. It will not end up a classic merely because of its odd lack of depth in covering a common philosophical questions with a not so original depiction. The depiction of human development and depravity, as well as our relationship to our Maker are worth seeing, and fill in the gaps from an otherwise weak movie.

Part of my resolution to have a movie review blog was to watch movies I wouldn't otherwise see, and "The Last Five Years" is not a movie I would've seen in theaters but I might have picked it up on DVD or if it was Netflix. I'm not a hater of musicals in the least, and I'm not one of those who doesn't like books or musicals turned into movies, but this movie is one reason why those people exist and why it's easy to criticize the adaptation.

The movie tells the story of a young Jewish novelist and a struggling actress he falls in love with. The plot and characters have an obvious appeal to people in musical theater, something I've learned to expect in any modern musical similar to how novelists like to have their main characters be novelists or bookstore owners (or both). The annoying part of this movie is that it's all the movie is. If I had to sum up the movie it'd be two people in creative lines of work with varying success having passionate, almost over-the-top duets. And that's the entire movie. And it's all sung (which I'm not outright against since it worked so well in "Umbrellas of Cherbourg").

Jamie is the younger, more successful, more arrogant novelist in the relationship while Cathy seems to have more charm and personability though she can't seem to get a break in her career. Questions of resentment and female independence in her career (and the comments seem to be just token nods) arise for moments though it sinks back down in the quicksand of necking that the two characters seem to do way too much.

What's innovative about how the story is told, though (and I see this as one of two of the movie's redeeming aspects) is that the plot moves in two directions, one from the beginning with Cathy's memories of their marriage, and the other where Jamie's memories are told from the beginning. Something's to be said for how men and women remember relationships different, what they saw as the best moments and what they saw as the worst. The film does play favorites with Cathy, though which is no surprise given the history of plots in musical theater and their primary demographic.

The second strong part of this movie is Anna Kendrick's performance. I was dubious at first but she carries herself well and has more nuance in her character portrayal than her male co-lead. Her voice is good, not great, and her acting ability supplements her singing very well.

The main problem with this movie is tone. Yes, it's a rehashing of a romance from memory from two perspectives, but it is all singing, and all centered directly around romance depicted in a small set of actions between two actors. It's the false idea that anything worth telling about a relationship must be the romantic interactions, as if there wasn't anything else worth recalling about two people being in love. And by romantic interplay I mean talking through transitional points in the relationship, fights about expectations and communication, and physicality (which may seem broad but it doesn't come across as such in the movie). That's 99% of the movie and everything the characters do revolves around that strong theme. The problem is that it's too strong of a seasoning. It's where a spice becomes the meat and you miss the stable taste of flesh rather than a watery stock or sprinkling of flavor. It's like George Lucas yelling "faster and more intense" to his actors in the first Star Wars movie without any further direction. I imagine the director doing a similar thing with the two leads in this, "passionate and more in love" which inevitably will lead to an overbearing depiction of the same thing we've seen throughout the movie. This movie will appeal to viewers who already adore musicals but will not win over any new fans to the genre.

I got the chance to see "Diplomacy" last night at the Angelika in Dallas, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it. Twenty minutes into it, I saw where the movie was heading, the set up of it, and enjoyed every minute. The movie is a shining light on the wisdom, gentleness, and burden of age and power. Two elderly men are grappling, albeit with very different styles, over the future of Paris and its iconic treasures. It's a snapshot of history that I never saw, and holds a profound depth I won't forget.

The play-turned-movie is the story of the general in charge of the Nazi Occupation of Paris, and the Swedish diplomat who has a passing relationship with the man when the play begins. All of Paris' great architectural treasures are to be destroyed to buy time for the retreat of the Nazi army across France, and it's only a matter of hours before the order is given. The Swedish diplomat in his powerful and sly persuasive style takes on the general in trying to dissuade him through some of the most artful, intelligent and brilliant rhetoric I've seen in a movie. In many ways the film feels like a boxing match, a final scene in a Rocky movie between an underdog boxer and his strong but weary opponent who seemingly has no weaknesses.

There is both the German and French culture's strengths and weaknesses on display (even though the diplomat represents Sweden he openly says that Paris has embraced her and she him). I love this sort of contrast, particularly in showing that Germans have a softer side that's deep and valuable to them, and the French have a gristly fighting spirit that was formidable and feared up to this day; unfortunate stereotypes for both cultures. I read a quora article today about how the French didn't flee the Germans, they fought but in the WWI style that was ineffective against the Blitzkrieg (now adopted by all modern militaries in the world today). We also forget the British lost to the Germans shortly afterward, and were driven back to their island.

The movie feels like a play, which I would somewhat fault it for in some ways, but it doesn't become a distraction or take away from the film. Also the movie seems small at times, with 90% of the dialog happening in one room in a hotel where the Nazi general works. Granted, this is likely due to the low budget and it does help the motif of the movie being about the power these two men have over the fate of Paris.

This movie falls in line with a string of films lately that could almost make a genre itself: the artist/culturally sensitive figure fighting to preserve and save artistic treasures amidst a raging battle. "Monuments Men" and "The Train" come to mind immediately.

I can't help but think of all the destruction caused by wars, the Abbey at Monte Cassino being one, as well as several that we're seeing in the Middle East. I remember reading about how many important buildings and museums were threatened and attempted to be preserved as the US army went through Iraq.

Historical treasures that are destroyed by war is one of the greatest arguments against it, its chaos and disregard for what's most valuable in the world. A broader theme though is the value of an entire culture and its history, and how often war and strife easily take those down, possibly because they're so prominent and essential to a city's character. Coming from a country like the US, I don't have as acute a sense of this as those who live in Europe, but there is still something in humanity in which we are drawn to monumental art, and value it as more than just a tourist site. Paris is an easy example of this.

The movie is worth seeing, and it's quaint in its setting, and beams a sense of humility which is refreshing when movies in our time seem to fight to be the biggest (though the consequences of the decisions made in the movie are massive). It's where live theater has something to offer the world of movies, a kind of depth through being as small as possible.