More Than One Lesson

Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies is a very good- sometimes great- movie about the importance of seeing people as they are, rather than what they represent. That this is couched in a Cold War spy story makes this theme all the more resonant. For decades, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were engaged in a non-violent war of ideologies. This war often manifested itself as a constant scramble for information; about weapons, about technology, about pretty much anything. Paranoia was at an all-time high, with special attention paid to those that could be spies for the other side, infiltrating our ranks and selling our secrets.

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Before we dive into defining movies as “good” or “bad,” it might be valuable to use another more basic term which might be applied to any art in any medium, but which certainly applies to film. Before a film can be considered either good or bad, we first have to figure out whether or not a film “works”.

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Let’s get right down to business. The movie is called Queen Crab. Its plot involves the daughter of a scientist studying growth chemicals in plant life feeding her father’s experiments to her pet crab, causing it to become gigantic. How could anything possibly go wrong?

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I was up late one night while we were visiting family out of town. I was alone, flipping through channels to find a movie to watch, when I stumbled across a sequence of images of a person sharpening knives and hammering metal brackets. A haunting lullaby ominously underscored the project and once the contraption was complete, a hand spread its fingers and revealed a terrifying knife-fingered glove. The title card read A Nightmare on Elm Street. I was eight years old.

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James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour is a fascinating and sensitive exploration into the inner life of an unknowable person. In an attempt to delve into the complicated world of David Foster Wallace, Ponsoldt goes so much deeper and uncovers truths that are at once specific to Wallace, yet universal to anybody that has ever attempted to express himself, creatively or otherwise. It is a dark and invigorating place, and Ponsoldt has captured it perfectly.

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Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man can certainly be commended for being different. As the other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe get larger in their scope, Ant-Man appropriately scales things down to a much more manageable size. We don’t get galaxies hanging in the balance. Instead, it’s just a basic story of corporate greed and recklessness and a few plucky heroes out to stop it.

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In this minisode, Tyler discusses his thoughts about Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World.

Over the weekend Jurassic World made broke the record for the biggest domestic opening of all time. This came as quite a surprise, considering the record was expected to go to The Avengers: Age of Ultron last month, breaking the record set by the first Avengers in 2012.

Jurassic Park was a phenomenon in the summer of 1993 with adults and kids alike, but I think that even Universal was unaware of quite how important the first film was to a generation of kids that grew up in the 90s. I’ve always held a belief that Jurassic Park was to those kids what Star Wars was to the generation that grew up in the 70s. Both films revolutionized visual effects and captured the imaginations of millions of people around the planet. And they both happen to hold the top spots for my favorite films of all time.

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There is a moment early in Joss Whedon’s Avengers: Age of Ultron in which the superhero team contemplates how they could possibly fight against another onslaught of interstellar monsters. Captain America quietly states, “Together.” In the moment, it seems somehow sad, maybe even pathetic, to think that the only consolation about impending death is that they’ll die alongside one another. The moment has power, but not because it is inspirational.

The inspiration comes later, after the in-fighting and paranoia. After blame is thrown around and the characters are belittled by one another. Only after the team is at its lowest, with virtually no cohesion at all, do they finally come together to fight against an army of robots. Why does this happen? Because when you’re that low, you come to realize just how weak you are and how much you need other people. It is at that moment, after exposing one another’s flaws and fears and accepting them, that the Avengers truly comes together as a team.

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Traditionally, the American Christian right is closely associated with conservatism and traditional “American” values. So it’s no surprise that Burns Family Studios, a Christian film company started by two home-schooling families, chooses to set their new film around the American Revolution. The company has one film under their belt so far, the medieval epic Pendragon: Sword of His Father, which was well received at several Christian and Family Film festivals. While Pendragon was a passion project shot in back yards and starring the Burns family themselves, Beyond the Mask is a more ambitious, higher budget project, aiming to stand alongside similar Hollywood projects.

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