THE SUN ALSO RISES a book review

THE SUN ALSO RISES a book review

Jakes Barnes is our narrator and main character and yet the book revolves around the machinations of Lady Brett Ashley, a beautiful young woman that has everything and yet only wants what she cannot have.  The result of Lady Ashley is that most every man in the book is thrilled and miserable for her existence.  There is a lot of drinking in THE SUN ALSO RISES, that mirrors Ernest Hemingway’s own adventures in France and Spain during the 1920s.   Although Hemingway just liked to drink you get the impression that Hemingway’s characters drink to rid themselves of the pain caused by the oblivious Lady. 

The conventional wisdom of the book seems to be that Jake and Lady Ashley are in love, but unable to consummate their relationship due to Jake’s unspecified war injury.  But it seems to me that Lady Ashley’s love for Jake is precisely because his injury allows her to see herself as some sort of tragic heroine.   For his macho reputation, Hemingway writes very sensitive and complicated men that hide their emotions in booze.   The most outwardly macho of them all, Robert Cohn, is treated as a bully and loathed by everyone by the conclusion. 

Although Hemingway’s personal adventures in Paris get much ink, I feel that the novel only offers a glimpse of that location.  The sequences in Spain are much more vivid.  You’ll learn how to fish for Spanish trout or how the bulls are herded through town rather than how to get from the Champ Elyse to Notre Dame.   The reader comes away understanding why Hemingway was so invested in the Spanish Civil War.  He really loved that country.  

I don't know whether I would recommend the book to just anyone.  I think you'd need to have some interest in the locales or activities, because the characters aren't exactly inspiring.  Hemingway's short stories from this period are more economical.

ARGO (2012) a movie review

I'm not sure if Argo benefits from the generally lousy movies that come out every year or if the critics and the Academy are just surprised that Ben Affleck is a decent director. This film, like his two prior efforts GONE BABY GONE, and THE TOWN, is above average in so many ways and yet still a bit overrated. While some of the film is brilliant docudrama chronicling the Iranians storming the U.S. Embassy, other parts use stock Hollywood characters for the sake of humor in ways that are entertaining although unsurprising. The biggest letdown is Affleck’s ending that uses the same formula that D.W. Griffith invented in 1915 and has been used a thousand times since. And the shame is that it didn’t really need that device to make the ending work.

Affleck himself proves again to be a decent leading man in the right material. Bryan Cranston has become the king of the solid two scene role, John Goodman seems to have a small role in 1/3 of all Hollywood movies released this year, and Alan Arkin gives a stock character enough charisma that you forgive the familiarity.

There was a better movie inside this entertaining movie had Affleck only had the confidence to surprise us a few more times. If this were to beat ZERO DARK THIRTY for Best Picture it would akin to SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE beating SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012) a movie review

After a few exploding heavies it occurred to me that Quentin Tarantino has borrowed the central device from Passion of the Christ for his last two movies. That premise being if you make the antagonists sadistic enough then no amount of violence is too much. In Gibson’s case the violence was heaved on our hero, making the heavies all the more so vile. In Tarantino’s case the violence is directed toward Nazis or slave holders and in such comic form that it is part shocking and part humorous. As the audience we must simply accept that human beings are put into this film to turn into a river of goo. If you think of it as a Tom and Jerry cartoon with guts then you will have a better shot at getting through it, because in Django Unchained human biology is 80% blood and a single gunshot empties the entire container. Further, guys will sometimes run into a room single file so that Django can turn them into empty containers, much like Beatrix putting away teenage samurais in Kill Bill. At one point it seems that every white man in Mississippi lay dead in a single plantation house after being summoned by Django’s shooting iron.

Tarantino has a real knack for milking the tension in a scene, but those scenes sometimes drag on for so long and/or fail to payoff that the tension doesn’t work on second viewings. He can also write great dialogue so that he often faces the danger of letting his characters talk too much at the expense of action or just talk too much after they have run out of interesting things to say. For both of those reasons I liked Kill Bill 2 quite a bit at the cinema, but couldn’t make it through 30 minutes later on Netflix. I haven’t tried Inglorious Basterds again fearing that I couldn’t make it again through that tavern scene.

Tarantino is good at the homage and this movie is full of them beginning with the music from the original 1960s movie, Django. It’s also full of cameo appearances by people you might recognize from regular movie viewing and others that you would recognize from b-movies. Some of them surprised me. I didn’t recognize Tom Wopat until I saw his name in the credits. Don Johnson was recognizable despite the great Gaylord accent and a Mark Twain suit. He gives a fine short comic performance. Leo is quite good with his menacing southern charm. Sam Jackson is memorable as only he can be in Tarantino material. No complaints about Jamie Foxx either. I think Foxx was a better choice than Will Smith for Django because Smith has a hero’s charm, but he lacks the danger necessary for such a vengeful role. Mostly I was impressed with Christopher Waltz that went from Nazi heavy to sympathetic bounty hunter under Tarantino and was the most interesting character in both movies.

The movie isn’t for all tastes, but if you like his other material you shouldn’t walk away disappointed or surprised at the outcomes.

LINCOLN (2012) a movie review

I think Spielberg was smart to focus the movie on short time frame, but I question whether the passage of the 13th amendment should have been his pivotal moment. We already know it passes and anyone that has read the history knows it would have passed pretty easily later as the 14th and 15th amendments passed after the completion of the war. The legislative battle has some drama, but it's nothing that we haven't seen before. The film's small moments work best with Lincoln and Seward or Lincoln and his family. Spielberg seems true to the Lincoln as raconteur and the stories he shares are memorable. Daniel Day Lewis has that Lincoln twang that most actors have adopted throughout the years that makes it authentic, although we have no idea what he sounded like. It is somewhat curious that Spielberg chooses to join the action directly after the completion of two significant historical moments, Lee's surrender at Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination. Maybe the latter has been done enough times, but I have not yet seen good a depiction of the former. Spielberg has the right actors, tone, setting, and authenticity, but he chooses the formula battle instead of trusting the smaller moments to carry the action. It may not have been the strongest choice.

ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012) a movie review

What I like most about the movie is that the heroes are the boots on the ground CIA members and the painstaking work they do to keep the world safe. Our media is only interested in making heroes and villains out of our Presidents and other elected officials, but it’s the CIA people that are a constant as party politics shift back and forth at the national level. If you are not risking your personal skin in the fight then you really aren’t a hero. This movie is about heroes.
 
Most movies tend to be a cartoon version of life with everything having a clean answer and no loose ends left. Zero Dark Thirty is played in the reverse. It’s a complicated movie about the various tactics used through the years that led to the capture of Osama Bin Laden. While in real life we heard that waterboarding is torture and torture never works narrative from our media, in the movie those interrogation techniques yielded information that led to the capture of more terrorists that eventually led to paydirt. We can argue about the morality of those techniques but they work in a way that complicates easy answers. When national chatter includes prosecuting CIA operatives that used those techniques, it’s the people in this movie we would prosecute. What makes ZERO DARK THIRTY great is that it doesn’t stop the debate over the techniques but it makes weigh their success into your worldview. While The Hurt Locker shows you what it’s like to be a soldier during the war years, Zero Dark Thirty show you the intelligence struggles. The two movies together are best document yet of the challenges of a post 9-11 world.

JACK REACHER (2012) a movie review

Jack Reacher is a great throwback to the 1980s and 1990s before CGI dominated action films. Critics are unfairly harsh on Christopher McQuarrie expecting that every movie be another Usual Suspects when he seems more interested in perfecting the kind of action movie that is becoming extinct. I have read the first 5 Jack Reacher books and they all required more suspension of disbelief than this film. And McQuarrie also finds an economy of storytelling in the movie that author Lee Child lacks with some of his books totaling over 700 pages. Cruise may be a nutter outside of film acting, but performances like this remind you why he has been on top for so long.