Monthly Archives: May 2015

Wish For Christmas

I heckle a lot of Christmas movies, especially the Hallmark ones, for being unforgivably cheesy and predictable. Those are the staple ingredients of their white bread movies, and you need to add a LOT of your own salt in order to make it palatable. But Wish For Christmas is bad in an entirely new way.

Anna (Anna Fricks) is a typical high school student, gearing up for the winter ball. Her parents, Luke (Joey Lawrence, with eyebrows so perfectly sculpted they’re suspicious) and Elizabeth (Leigh-Allyn Baker), are super religious. They “bring light to the law” in their law practice, which is not-for-profit, actually turns away paying customers, and focuses only on helping poor people whose homes are being foreclosed. And somehow they stay afloat. Don’t question it. Their family puts god first, which means never missing church, and praying before you eat pizza, and forbidding your teenage daughter from dressing like a teenage daughter. Although they’ve still managed to raise a real bitch. But then disaster strikes: the winter ball gets moved to Christmas Eve, which means Anna can’t go, as she is obligated to attend services at her uncle’s church. So she did the only thing that makes sense. She uses her nightly prayer to wish that her parents do not believe in god anymore. And it works!

So now her parents are non-Christian, which means her dad says things like “Hey, man” and her mom lets her buy a dress that doesn’t suck, and they toast their business with actual wine that they actually drink. And they get very worked up when a very expensive vase gets broken. Oh and they don’t pick up their phone on the first ring. But the rest of the town still thinks of them as religious, so they still show up for Bible study and such. Oh boy is it awkward. Consider them added to the town’s prayer list.

This movie gives Christians a bad name, and makes them look like fools. And when the screenwriter imagines the nefarious things nonChristians get up to, it’s even more ludicrous. Like, the secretary now has to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. It’s impossible to take this shit seriously and important that you don’t. Jesus needs to fire his publicist. Wish For Christmas is every kind of bad except the kind that’s so bad it’s kind of good. This is so bad it stays bad, and makes you feel dirty, leaves a grimy film on the holiday season, and on movies generally. It’s going to take a real miracle to adequately cleanse myself of this movie’s awfulness.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

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Avengers: Age of Ultron is great! Not Oscar-great but blockbuster-great. No need to think or feel creeped out about A.I. like in Ex Machina, just enjoy the ride with moody Ultron as he carries out his plan to kill all humans. But fear not! Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are on the case.

One of the things Age of Ultron does best is give us lots of new characters. That fits well with the revolving door that is the Avengers comic book roster. So we are introduced/reintroduced to many characters we know are, or will become, Avengers, like War Machine, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Vision, and in unfortunate licencing loophole, Quicksilver. Jay found that super confusing having already seen a different Quicksilver, without an accent, in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and I agree. It shouldn’t have happened and it takes away from the movie. Still better to have him here, I think, because Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are great together (this movie captured their relationship well) but it’s time for a deal with Fox. At least Marvel got Spider-Man back from Sony, but let’s get the rest of these movies working together too.

Seeing Vision pop up was an unexpected surprise for me. I liked that he made an appearance and thought he was used well, both as a source of conflict between the Avengers and then as a contrast to Ultron, though they share the same view on humanity’s likely future (i.e., not promising). Really, all the new characters were handled well and I feel like we are well on our way to the Infinity Gauntlet saga.

The disappointing thing is there are now four or five other Marvel movies on the way between now and Avengers 3. I’m excited for Captain America 3, especially with Spidey on board, but beyond that, it’s way too much. Especially when I use Vision’s introduction as a comparison; Ant-Man, Black Panther, and Dr. Strange could all be brought in as part of an Avengers movie, and I wish that’s what was being done. But since there’s money on the table we get separate movies for each. Let’s be honest, I will probably see all those, so you can expect to hear this same complaint every few months between now and the next Avengers movie.

I can’t hold that against this movie though. Avengers: Age of Ultron itself does things exactly right. I thoroughly enjoyed it and wouldn’t have changed a thing so it gets ten Infinity Gems out of ten.

True Crime

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Over the weekend we took in True Story – the Jonah Hill\James Franco movie about a man who killed his wife and kids, fled to Mexico, and assumed the identity of a disgraced NYTimes journalist. Learning this, the journalist meets the guy in prison and writes the story of how he’s actually innocent. It got me thinking about cinema’s strange fascination with real-life criminals, and whether the Hollywood glamorization machine contributes to delinquency.

Personally, I have guilt. I immediately think of The Wolf of Wall Street – I love me some Marty Scorsese, but I had serious reservations about helping to line the pockets of someone who so callously victimized others. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a young man who became addicted to the high life as a stock broker, and realized he could make even more money by scamming and defrauding countless trusting people.

Jordan Belfort was convicted of his crimes but spent less than 2 years in jail because he cooperated with the FBI. I used to believe in a line from True Story – that a criminal cannot profit from his crimes. Turns out, this is not quite true. Most states have “Son of Sam” laws (so named because people were understandably outraged when it seemed David Berkowitz stood to get paid for his story) but these laws tend to be found unconstitutional because of free speech and discrimination based on subject matter. If a case like this is challenged, the criminal tends to win, so mostly nobody bothers to enforce it. So Jordan Belfort wrote a book, and got paid for it. And then Leo bid over a million dollars for the rights (and just for comparison’s sake, Jonah Hill made $60 000 for his work). And then Marty paid him another quarter million to ‘consult’ – he stood around on set, instructing Leo how to act all fucked up on Quaaludes and shit. And then he actually appeared in the end of the movie! So he made $1.2M and even though he’s supposed to be paying his victims back, only $21 000 ever went toward his restitution obligations.

Christina McDowell, daughter of Tom Prousalis, who worked closely with the real-life Belfort at Stratton Oakmont, wrote an open letter addressing Scorsese, DiCaprio, and Belfort himself, criticizing the film for giving insufficient attention to the victims of the financial crimes created by Stratton Oakmont, for disregarding the damage that was done to her family as a result, and for giving celebrity to persons (Belfort and his partners, including her father) who do not deserve it. Hard to argue with that.

It’s this last part that’s getting to me. To what extent are we, the audience, culpable? Are we condoning crimes? Rewarding them? Encouraging them? Jordan Belfort likened himself to Gordon Gekko of Wall Street (the movie) – he was inspired by the character’s unscrupulousness. We can’t help how someone lacking a moral centre will interpret a movie (or a book, or a song, or a video game) – but we can and probably should stop giving these people a platform, or Hollywood’s version, a whole pedestal. Frank Abagnale Jr. was paid to work as a consultant on Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. Aileen Wuornos became a recognizable name when Charlize Theron won the Oscar for portraying her in Monster – but can you name a single one of her victims? Those bratty, fame-obsessed kids who stole from Paris Hilton and her ilk were rewarded with reality TV shows and free trips to luxury rehab in lieu of prison sentences. When Sofia Coppola filmed her movie The Bling Ring based on their misdeeds, she renamed the characters so they didn’t get more famous – but she also paid $100 000 for the rights, which means they did get more rich. Piper Kerman went to prison on felony charges for laundering drug money and was rewarded heavily for it when Netflix decided to make a series out of her memoir Orange is the New Black – they paid her (and continue to), but paid for the “life rights” of several others as well. Nice work if you can get it. Philip Morris was a paid advisor on the film I Love You Philip Morris, in which a con man (Philip’s ex-lover) steps up his game to impress a fellow prisoner, including orchestrating elaborate prison escapes. Henry Hill capitalized on his gangster career with a line of spaghetti sauces, frequent interviews with Howard Stern, and a restaurant called Wiseguys, though Scorsese ultimately went with Goodfellas when it came time to release the movie. It may be the best mob movie ever made, but it glamorized the lifestyle and allowed Hill to thoughtlessly respond “I don’t give a heck what those people think; I’m doing the right thing now” when asked what his victims might think of the commercialization of his story through self-written books and advising on the movie.