Would you kill your best friend?

This is a question I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about because of the film The Long Goodbye. It does ask you to answer that question (the novel does not). And the question fascinates me because loyalty is really important to me. That may seem odd, since I am anti-tribal. But that’s not really that difficult to explain. Tribalism is about labels, not actual bonds. Friendship is, for me anyway, about love.

Now, I can’t say that I would kill my best friend, because I don’t endorse that under any circumstances. But I would rollover on my best friend, which is ultimately the same thing: the abandonment of loyalty.

Marlowe Makes the Film

The truth is that The Long Goodbye is something of a mess of a film. Yet I’ve always loved it. It’s somewhat embarrassing to admit, but I feel much like Marlowe (Elliott Gould) in it. He’s a man out of time. He’s constantly interacting with a world that makes no sense to him. But he has what amounts to a mantra, “It’s okay with me.” Note his amused indifference to his young women neighbors. When Harry (David Arkin) says he thinks their naked stretching exercises indicates that they are lesbians, Marlowe says, “They’re just doing yoga.” What? “I don’t know what it is, but it’s yoga.”

What’s critical in The Long Goodbye is that Marlowe knows he doesn’t fit in, but everyone else thinks they have him completely pegged. It’s only Wade (Sterling Hayden) who thinks he’s odd, and that’s simply because the two of them suspect each other. (Marlowe thinks Wade killed Terry Lennox’s wife, and Wade thinks Marlowe is having an affair with his own.) Everyone else in the film plays him for a fool. Of course, he isn’t a fool. He’s just from a different time.

When People Peg You — Wrong

I had an experience recently that made me feel much the same way. I was running my errands — walking from the library to the Target — and these two young women singled me out to ask if I had a light. There were a lot of other people around, but I was the one they picked out. This is not all that uncommon, but the example was so stark that I couldn’t pass it off as people simply asking anyone nearby. It was the first time that it became clear to me that people see me as someone at the margins of society — a smoker, drug addict, whatever.

I’m well aware that I don’t fit in. But I thought that I came off as simply eccentric — absent-minded professor who doesn’t care what he wears or if his hair is combed. I wanted to yell at the young women, “Wrong stereotype!” But they have to be forgiven. Whereas Marlowe dresses for his stereotype, I give decidedly mixed signals — usually wearing jeans, a CAT hoodie, and a badly faded San Francisco Giants baseball cap. And even as the distracted intellectual that I am, there is little continuity — I’m as likely to be watching an old B horror film as I am a new translation of the Aeneid.

The Long Goodbye

But I do have a strict (some would say rigid) moral sense. Like Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, “It’s okay with me” — until it isn’t. And that’s what makes the ending of the film so powerful. For Marlowe, being liberal about the universe he finds himself in is not really a choice; there is no other universe that he can live in. Naked girls next door make no sense, so he has a cat. But we all have limits, like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

In The Long Goodbye, that limit is when your best friend savagely beats his wife to death. And after that, Marlowe walks away, playing the harmonica and dancing with a woman on the street. “It’s okay with me.”

When I reviewed Bloody Mallory, commenter Marc wrote, “While we’re on the subject of ‘silly French movies that are still a lot of fun to watch,’ permit me to recommend Banlieue 13.” A banlieue is basically a suburban area. So in the English speaking world, the film is known as District 13. It was released in 2004 and it stars two stunt men and a former female porn actor. I mention that as a compliment. First, it speaks well of the producers to cast such people. And watching it before I knew that, I had assumed they were all just regular actors — although with the men having training.

The two lead actors, David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli, are practitioners of Parkour (or close enough) — that seemingly gravity-defying style of running and jumping that isn’t that different from the wire work in The Matrix. There are two set pieces in the film with this: the first with just Belle and the second with both of them. These go along with such fast-paced editing (thanks, I assume, to director Pierre Morel) that it brought on actual motion sickness in me. I quickly got used to what was happening on the screen, and the nausea went away. But still, it was pretty intense. And it speaks well of a film that it can be that powerful — even if for a short period of time.

At this point, I suppose Parkour is a little tired. It was used in the 2006 version of Casino Royale. By the time something shows up in a James Bond film, it’s pretty much dead. But I still find it fascinating. It’s like watching an insect move. So I think the movie is worth watching just on that front.

District 13′s Plot

It’s also interesting if you look at it as an allegory of the Israel-Palestine conflict. That’s because the story is about how the power elite of Paris wall off District 13 because it is poor and filled with gangs and so on. Things just get worse as a result of that, where the people inside live in a kind of Mad Max work. And it is more and more of a political problem for the people outside. But I kind of doubt there was a great deal of thought given to this. The film is pretty clearly an homage to Escape From New York — although the substantial plot differences make it a far more interesting story.

The major problem with the District 13 is that when the action sequences aren’t taking place, the film is downright didactic. I don’t mean that it is trying to teach us how to be good human beings; I mean it is trying to teach us what the plot is. The writers Luc Besson (!) and Bibi Naceri didn’t take the time to show us what the action was about; they just tell us through dialog that is often unrelenting — particularly after Belle and Raffaelli team up.

It Works

All the same, it’s an enjoyable film. It skirts most of the action film cliches that are in every Hollywood blockbuster. A good example of this is that the hero must have some fateful confrontation with the alpha villain at the end. Not so here. Instead, the beta villain simply allows his gang to kill the alpha villain. And then it turns out that the beta villain is, all things considered, pretty reasonable (which we expected, largely to a great performance by Tony D’Amario). None of this should come as a surprise to fans of Luc Besson’s classic Léon: The Professional.

District 13 is certainly not a great film — or even an especially interesting one. But it’s entertaining. It’s story is far more compelling than most action films. And the action sequences themselves are as good as they get. If you’re interested in this kind of film, I don’t see how you can miss with it. And if it isn’t your kind of film, it’s far more bearable than most other action films.

Afterword

I had mentioned in my review of Bloody Mallory that the English dubbing was very bad and that you really did have watch the film in its original French. That’s not true for District 13. The dubbing is quite good both in terms of technology and acting. The French voice acting is notably better. But the English voice acting is good, and it doesn’t spoil the film.

People get the wrong idea about me. They think I hate entertainment. But I don’t!

You have to wonder what people expect though. Am I going to write articles about how much I really liked that scene in that movie I saw? Well, in some cases, I will do that. But it won’t be about how cool it was when Robin Hood cut the hangman’s rope with his arrow. There has to be more to it, or what is the point of my writing or you reading?

Reviewing Central Intelligence

So I find myself with the formidable task of discussing Central Intelligence — the 2016 action comedy starring Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson. I really enjoyed it, despite the fact that I knew the entire plot from the moment I saw Dwayne Johnson’s face digitally placed on the fat high school boy. Well, not entirely. But if you weren’t 20 minutes ahead of this film, you just weren’t paying attention.

The only thing that was surprising in Central Intelligence was that there were no surprises. Every trope of this genre was adhered to. There was not a single reversal, just to spice things up. I even told my sister[1], “The standard plot dictates that we think the head of the CIA unit be the bad guy (gal), but it will turn out that it is really his dead partner. But usually, screenwriters try to mess around with that.” They didn’t.

In fact, here is a universal truth of Hollywood action films: if all that remains of a dead character is an ear or a toe or some such, that character is not dead. And it’s obvious, really. Why put something stupid like that in the script otherwise? Why not just have the character be shot in the head and buried? Comic relief? Well, perhaps — if the film weren’t already a comedy.

The Film Works, Despite It All

I don’t own the film, so I can’t go into great depth about the total lack of creativity in this script. The same thing goes for all the artistic departments: they all did a perfectly professional job with no hint that anything but competence was required. Yet it works. Unfortunately, I’m not totally sure why. I have theories, of course.

One of the reasons the film works is that it really doesn’t take itself seriously. Most action comedies seem as though the action sequences are serious. Not here. For one thing, Kevin Hart plays these scenes with all the insanity that they deserve. And we all know that Dwayne Johnson cannot be killed.

But I think a bigger reason that the film is so enjoyable is that Hart and Johnson work really well together. Hart is naturally a spaz. And Johnson has shown himself admirably able to play dorky characters. And the two of them just click. The film really isn’t an action picture so much as the story of a boy trying to get a really friendly and lovable dog to stop following him home.

It’s Time Is Over

Of course, there’s nothing real in this film. There is more character depth in a Nichols and May skit than there is in any character in this film. It wasn’t created to last more than a couple of weeks in the theater and then perhaps a year at Redbox. This is why Hollywood cranks out films. But rarely do they have the charm of Central Intelligence. And even when they do, there’s a huge opportunity cost. Central Intelligence cost $50 million to make. That’s over 62 times the budget of Dead Snow.

Central Intelligence was a good way to waste two hours. But watching too many films like it is a good way to waste your life.

[1] In general, I do not talk during films. But my older sister is incapable of sitting all the way through a film. So we had to pause it about eight times.

John Clarke and Bryan Dawe are two, well, Australian comedians. It’s hard to peg them. For one thing, Clarke is actually from New Zealand, but I’m an American and so that’s close enough. Also, they do an awful lot of different work. I suspect that both of them think of themselves as writers more than anything. Also, they are somewhat unevenly matched, with Clarke being a bigger star than Dawe.

That’s probably why they generally haven’t been considered a comedy team. In fact, in as much as they are a comedy team, it is presented on John Clarke’s website, Clarke and Dawe Project.

Clark and Dawe Begin

But back in 1989, the two of them started performing mock interviews for the Australian television program A Current Affair. What’s wonderful about these is that they are very easy to mistake for a real interview. Indeed, on YouTube is a video clip, Australian Idiot Talks About Whale Death FUNNY. The person posting it wrote in the description, “Watch this Australian guy (who I think is running for some kind of elected office) talk about the death of a whale in an interview.” Now that might be a con, but there is no indication on his YouTube channel and it is posted as News & Politics, not Comedy.

And the truth is, it is easy enough to get confused. James sent me the following video, and it took me roughly 10 seconds to figure out that it was not serious. James was apparently looking for information about an oil spill on 21 July 1991 that occurred to the Kirki when it lost its bow. I assume this segment was done within a month of it, at most. Their work has always been topical.

They did interviews like this from 1989 to 1997, and then stopped.

On The 7.30 Report

Some time later (I’m not sure — I assume a few years), Clarke and Dawe returned on a different Australian current affairs program, The 7.30 Report. According to Wikipedia, they did this act pretty much once per week until 2012 (The 7.30 Report became simply 7.30 in 2011).

The following video is from the end of that period. It is clearly making fun of tabloid king Rupert Murdoch. But the story is about Australian model Lara Bingle. And the subtext is that the newspapers are running some kind of vague stories just so they can publish pictures of this young woman — most likely in a bikini.

But there is another side to it, that I relate to. A lot of the time there are big stories and they don’t seem to be about anything that anyone actually cares about.

I probably should explain the Shakespeare jokes there, but you can just look it up. Or just realize that Dawe is right — Polonius is definitely not in Romeo and Juliet. In fact, he isn’t even in much of Hamlet, but he does do a lot of talking while he’s still alive.

Their Very Own Show

In 2013, they got their own show, Clarke and Dawe. As you can see by the link, it still seems to be going. Over the years, they’ve broadened their act. For example, there are a number of segments that are kind of like game shows, European Debt Crisis. (Note: it’s funny, but they miss the biggest point about what what going on — and continues to — in the EU.)

Here is one of the last things they did at the end of last year, “Some Great Xmas Gift Ideas Here.” The part about the Australian superhero is hilarious. But the whole thing ends kind of darkly — brilliantly — but darkly.

You really should check out Clarke and Dawe. They are quite brilliant. I spent well over an hour watching these two-minute bits and never got tired of them.

I finally got around to seeing The Martian the other day. And in a sense, it is the perfect American entertainment. What The Odyssey was for the ancient Greeks, this film is for Americans: it tells them who they are supposed to be. The film is so filled with pluck that I really wanted to see Mark Watney (Matt Damon) die at the end.

But no. The Martian tells us all that there is no problem we can create that we can’t fix. (This is a terrible philosophy — and provably false.) So the film becomes kind of a “how to” documentary for surviving on Mars. This is made less tedious than it would be by Watney’s constant flippant chattering. And I’ve always found Damon kind of adorable. But really, there isn’t much here to like.

There is a constant drum beat of supposedly funny lines about Watney being stuck with only Disco music. I’m not really sure if, as a viewer, I was supposed to agree with him or not. It would have been better to pick a style of music that has not been widely mocked. At least in that case, we might learn something about who Watney is. But we don’t. Nor do we learn anything about any of the other characters. Really: the film is made up of positions, not characters.

I’ll give a nod Sean Bean — playing the mission director. He doesn’t have much of a part, but he has almost the entirety of the humanity in the film. He’s an exceptional actor who really doesn’t get as much due as he deserves. But who needs humanity when you can be an American!™? Really, rather than The Martian, the film should have been titled, The American.[1]

The Martian Is Just Another Disaster Film

The Martian got me thinking about the point of entertainment. Because I’ve seen this film so many times before. It’s just a disaster film. It is The Poseidon Adventure. But, you know, without actual human characters. It is The Towering Inferno. But, you know, without actual suspense. I’ll bet the vast majority of my readers (who skew older) haven’t seen either of those films. So why not just watch them? Why watch a guy on Mars grow potatoes using his own excrement as fertilizer?

That’s not a rhetorical question. We live in a world in which no one needs to suffer from hunger or homelessness. So after you get those issues taken care of, what is left but ways to find meaning in life and enjoying entertainment? Nothing really. But entertainment is a business. So films are not produced to entertain, but to make money. So Hollywood is going to put how how ever many films each year, even though almost none of them are categorically different from films we’ve seen before.

Newer Isn’t Necessarily Better

What’s more, these new versions are not necessarily better. For example, The Martian, in addition to being kind of boring, is all CGI. The film just looks mushy. Watney mentions gazing at the horizon every day just because he can. Yet there is not a single frame in the film that made me think, “Wow! That’s beautiful!” This is a big problem with modern blockbusters: they’re all pretty much Who Framed Roger Rabbit (that is, live actors on top of a cartoon).

A much better film that is similar, but categorically different is Moon. (See my review.) It should have been made. The Martian? I really can’t say. You will get the same exact experience from countless other films. So why make just another disaster film? I mean: besides making money.

Afterword

I think the film could have been something much greater if Mark Watney had died at the end. Obviously, the entire script would need to be reworked. But it might have said something about pluck that I hadn’t heard before. Maybe pluck is it’s own reward? Watney will die eventually anyway. What if he had just held out as long as he could and all the world looked on helpless? It wouldn’t have to be a downer. Think of Shane.

The Martian as it stands ends with an annoying lecture by Watney where he says, “You solve one problem — and you solve the next one — and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home.” Yeah. But we already knew that. If you just happen to be a botanist stranded on Mars who knows far more about operational matters than I find credible, then there might be a sequence of steps that allow you to come home. But often times, there are no steps that lead home. And that’s simply a more interesting thing to think about — especially when you consider how completely implausible the ending of The Martian is.

[1] There is a film called The American, which stars George Clooney. It is a much more likable film. Or rather, it is a much more poetic film. I’ll have to revisit it.

I went to see the movie Hidden Figures recently. It is a movie about the women “computers” who were critical to the American space program. The twist, if that’s the right word, is that these weren’t just women; they were black women.

NASA’s Long History of Women Computers

Back in the day, NASA, along with it’s precursor the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), used people who were known literally as computers; “computer” was a job title. Starting with Virginia Tucker in 1935, NASA hired hundreds of women who had math or other science degrees to do the calculations for the work of the engineers. Since it paid more than being a teacher, plenty of women took these positions.

But the Langley campus did something remarkable: it recruited black women for the positions, and created a specific sub-department for them and assigned them as needed throughout the campus.

Hidden Figures Differences

In Hidden Figures, the timeline is a bit different than it was in reality. For instance, Dorothy Vaughn (PDF), who became the first black woman to be a supervisor (in 1949), actually learned programming before the film’s time. Desegregation occurred (legally) in 1945 with an executive order by FDR. Emotionally, it was another matter. However, it isn’t easy to say, “Oh yeah, this executive order made this possible.” It doesn’t relate to most film-goers because few know that he did that.

Setting it between the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the earthshaking change of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, it showed how the black women of the time navigated the dangerous waters of their race and gender even in the federal government. By doing this it lets the average viewer see how the world was changing towards a more just outcome for these women.

One of the women, Mary Jackson obtained permission to attend an all-white high school right about the time that Brown v Board of Education was decided (in 1953). And she completed her courses to become an engineer in 1958. The movie has her doing so after the setting of 1961, as it once again, showed the problems that lingered despite the efforts of the federal government.

Hidden Figures Similarities

Where Hidden Figures was similar was in the difficulties that women still face — especially black women. Katherine Goble (later Johnson) was eventually assigned, in 1958, to the Space Task Force. This was the unit that did the calculations and other needed work for Alan Shepard’s and John Glenn’s first space flights. Right before that though, Johnson’s husband passed away leaving her the single mother of three girls. It became a balancing act between the needs of her family and the needs of the space program. Things get even more complex when she is wooed by an army colonel.

Bathroom Breaks

Hidden Figures shows the numerous times that women, especially non-white women, have to bite their tongues. Because of the segregation still left in place in many places, the black “computers” were relegated to colored-only bathrooms that in this case was a half mile from the main facility that Johnson had to do her work. That meant she had to do a mile hike just to use the restroom. In heels. As fast as she could.

Then one day, she has to do it in the pouring rain and that is, of course, the day that her boss wants to know where she disappears to for forty minutes. In a powerful, but short, outburst she explains exactly why she has to disappear for forty minutes with a simple reference to one other indignity: the coffee maker labeled colored. The next scene shows the boss personally smashing down the signs and saying as of right now, where you piddle is desegregated.

It is an important scene because it means that the black women are treated at least as equals to the white women. It is about respect and dignity and why things like fighting HB2 are so important even though they can have real political costs.

Final Thoughts

Hidden Figures was extremely powerful, but not overwhelmingly so. It was ably broken up by the parts that showed the home lives of the women, but focused mostly on the work that the women did. For me, watching this in the aftermath of the painful results in November, what struck me the most was how quietly and overwhelmingly competent these women were forced to be in order to simply get the minimum standard of respect that white men and, to a lesser extent, white woman got.

After the movie was over, the audience applauded. So did I. I cannot recommend it enough.

Afterword

For further reading on the ladies of NASA:

• Hidden Figures
• Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars
• Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America’s First Female Rocket Scientist

Many years ago, when I was in grad school, I saw what I thought was a hell of a fun movie, Blind Fury. It stars Rutger Hauer — an actor I have very mixed feelings about because his work is so uneven. But there are times when you just can’t help but love him, and Blind Fury is one of those times. It’s Death Wish for the thinking man who really can’t stand to look at Charles Bronson’s face anymore.

Anyway, I was over at our only remaining video store. I didn’t imagine that they would have it. But I asked and they did! So I brought it home and watched it. Was it as good as I remembered? Well… I’m not quite the same man that I was 25 years ago. For one thing, I’m well aware of the Zatoichi films — about a blind masseur and sword expert. Between 1962 and 1989, there were 26 films made about the character. I haven’t seen any of them. In the 1970s, it was turned into a television series and 100 episodes were made. I own 5 of them on DVD.

Now, of course, watching Blind Fury is kind of like watching The Magnificent Seven after you’ve fallen in love with Seven Samurai. But what I’ve seen of Zotoichi is not exactly great. It’s fun. And so is Blind Fury. In fact, the film seems more like a television show. The ending even sets up a sequel. Too bad the film wasn’t a success.

Blind Fury Should Have Been a TV Show

It should have been like another film that Rutger Hauer was (unfortunately terrible) in that became a television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It should have become Blind Fury: The Television Series, with Rutger Hauer walking away at the end of every episode scored with solo piano, like The Incredible Hulk.

The story is awesomely silly. Hauer is blinded during the Vietnam War. He is capture by some good Vietnamese — the kind who train blind men how to be total badasses with a sword. And I mean it. I mean like “chopping a mango into quarters as it flies through the air” badass. But now it is 20 years later and he has come to see his old army buddy to forgive him for letting him get all blind. But it turns out that his old army buddy is being held captive by a casino owner who is making him create designer drugs.

Good Clean Fun

Much kicking of ass follows. Unfortunately, much annoying 13 year old boy that badass with a sword must protect also follows. But it’s okay. Most people don’t hate child actors quite as much as I do. He’s not Quinn Cummings. (Note: if you are reading this Ms Cummings, Don DiPietro isn’t good enough for you. Call me! We’ll move to Ghana together!) And it doesn’t really matter. The film doesn’t take itself seriously. Remember: the mango.

Should you watch this film? I think so. It’s so much better than most action films. Even if you don’t like action films (and I don’t), how can you not love a film where a blind guy walks about kicking ass? It’s just good fun. Now if he were a masseur, well, that’s the stuff the greatness.