Father and Son Explore the Grid Together in TRON: Legacy

When it comes to appreciation of geeky 1980s movies, I generally think I have my bases covered pretty well. As buzz for Disney’s TRON: Legacy began to build, however, I had to admit that this was a movie with which I was almost entirely unfamiliar. So I saw the original in anticipation of the sequel. I confess that I found the 1982 movie a bit disorienting, but there were aspects of it that I really enjoyed, and because I watched that first, I think I was better able to appreciate the new movie.

TRON: Legacy stars the little-known Garrett Hedlund as Sam Flynn, the 27-year-old son of Kevin, the computer genius who created the video game and traveled inside it during the first movie. He’s an aimless hothead, but he’s really a softie, and underneath a veil of cynicism is a kid who never quite gave up hope that his beloved dad, who went missing two decades earlier, might still be out there and still be thinking of him. The story in this second movie is about a lot of things: idealism, loyalty, cooperation, wisdom. It’s about the value and danger in trying to build a perfect world. But mostly, it’s about a father and son, long separated, reuniting in time to share a dream both had long believed impossible.

I’m a sucker for stories about father-son relationships, so I had a hunch that this movie would resonate with me on that level. It did, and it made me smile to see that Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, two of the main writers on the daddy issues-laden LOST, worked on the screenplay. Jeff Bridges, who starred in the original movie and who I’m really coming to admire as an actor, takes on an intriguing dual role here.

As in the first movie, there are Users and Programs, and in some cases, we have two complementary characters. Here, Bridges plays both Kevin Flynn, the grizzled sage who has mostly lived a life of quiet meditation since becoming trapped in the world of the Grid 20 years ago, and Clu, the well-groomed, much younger-looking, sinister program who Kevin designed to help him create his virtual utopia. He doesn’t have the same aura of menace about him that David Warner does in the first movie, but there’s something equally unsettling about him. He looks familiar and friendly but has a dark purpose, the true extent of which is known only to him. The two characters act and look so different that if the movie itself didn’t keep bringing it up, it might be easy to forget that they are the same person.

Hedlund makes a pretty appealing main character, and I love his scenes with Bridges as the senior Flynn, but it was Olivia Wilde who really made an impression upon me as Quorra, Kevin’s longtime companion and apostle of sorts. Wide-eyed and beautiful, Quorra is naïve, compassionate and eager to learn more about the world from which the Flynns came. Among the secondary players, it was nice to see Bruce Boxleitner again playing Flynn’s old friend Alan Bradley. In the real world, he and Sam share some nice, quiet scenes that remind me of the relationship between Harry Potter and Remus Lupin, his parents’ school chum and his favorite Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

A scruffy-looking Cillian Murphy puts in a brief appearance as the soft-spoken son of the first movie’s big baddie, Ed Dillinger. I thought that he would play a bigger role in the movie, but he’s just in one scene as an indication that Flynn’s company is falling into villainous hands – or at least greedy hands. Ed Jr. doesn’t really seem evil to me, just very turned off by the idea of giving something away for free, which Kevin Flynn had no qualms with. In the digital world, I found Michael Sheen so colorful as flamboyant club owner Castor that I could have sworn he was dressed in a peacock’s array of colors instead of just white. Any time he is on the screen, he demands complete attention.

I heard a lot of complaints about the movie’s plot, but it worked for me, and I think a great effort was made to beef up the exposition so that the audience didn’t feel as confused as the main character. I wouldn’t say that watching the first movie is essential to enjoying this one, but I think your appreciation of it will be a bit deeper if you do, and you’ll pick up on fun references. Of course, if you’re going just to get a visual spectacle, I don’t think that you’ll be disappointed in any event.

The Grid is a very distinct place, very technological, with an oppressive atmosphere of swirling black clouds that reminded me of The Dark Knight. In contrast to all that darkness are the stark, luminous patterns on the vehicles, clothing and architecture. In general, white lights signify virtue, while orange is vice. Unfortunately, we see a lot more orange than white. Still, there is a certain harsh beauty to it, and I often found myself thinking of Star Wars, with light cycles battling it out instead of X-wings and characters slashing each other with discs instead of light sabers in the deadliest twist on Frisbee imaginable. Those discs didn’t make too much of an impression on me in the first movie, but they’re all-important here, both as weapons and information storage units; Flynn’s contains the key to the Grid, and as such, it is deeply coveted by his nefarious doppelganger.

Although all the dreariness of the Grid got to me, making me feel a bit claustrophobic, I rarely had the sense of vertigo I got with the first movie, even watching it in 3D (which I don’t really think adds much to the experience). I didn’t like the score, which mostly consisted of low droning, but it fit the tone of the movie, which is a mere PG but feels darker. It really isn’t; there’s very little profanity, and what violence we see is just in the form of characters pixelating away into nothing, so it’s certainly not graphic. But the system of the Grid feels very fascist, and there’s a message in there somewhere about the danger of trying to keep things too uniform. Younger kids may find it a bit too heavy; it could have used a little more humor, and I confess that I rather hoped Sam would wind up bringing his dog into the Grid with him. That could’ve been fun. Still, on the whole, TRON: Legacy is quite enjoyable, both eye-catching and touching, and it was a great way to wrap up my 2010 movie-going.

Alice Helps Make New Moon Less Dreary On Film Than On Paper

I am not a fan of Romeo and Juliet. I suppose this means that I’m not much of a romantic, though I frankly don’t see what’s so swoonworthy about committing suicide in the wake of a loved one’s death. Especially when you’ve only known that person for a short period of time. In any case, I think the more romantic thing is to find a way of honoring the life of the one who has been lost. The only thing that makes Romeo and Juliet bearable for me is that the desperate actions of these two silly teenagers lead to the end of an equally silly feud between their families.

New Moon, the second installment in the Twilight movie series, makes the allusions to this Shakespeare tragedy apparent by showing Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Kristen Stewart) watching a movie version in class and discussing it. Within the first ten minutes of the movie, Edward starts in with the morbid talk, confessing how jealous he is of Romeo’s fragility. He comes right out and announces that if Bella ever dies - which she eventually will, as her birthday reminds her, since he steadfastly refuses to transform her into a vampire like him - he will kill himself.

Perhaps I should give him a break, since he’s lived more than a century and some world-weariness is bound to set in. But Edward has half a dozen people who care deeply about him, so it’s just as selfish for him to consider taking his own life as it would be for Bella, especially knowing that virtually the only way it could be done would be to go to the Volturi, the governing body of vampires to reside in Italy, and request that they tear him limb from limb, a pretty gruesome image for the rest of the Cullens to have to live with. But then when one is in love, there is a tendency to do things that don’t make a lot of sense, including tossing away life in the midst of despair.

There’s a lot of despair in New Moon, making it easily the hardest of the books for me to get through. The movie retains plenty of that, but it’s a little more tolerable, since we don’t have to put up with chapter after chapter of Bella’s morose narration.  Most of the voiceovers we do get are in the form of e-mails Bella writes to Edward’s “sister,” Alice, my favorite character in the series.  Although Bella isn’t actually sending them out, the very fact that she is framing these thoughts as writing to a friend - and such a relentlessly cheerful one at that - instead of wallowing in self-pity in complete isolation gives her musings a hopeful edge.

New Moon takes place three or four months after the conclusion of Twilight. Edward and Bella have spent every spare summer moment in each other’s company, often with Alice in tow, and now a new school year - Bella’s senior year - has begun. With it comes Bella’s birthday, which makes her despondent, since it means that she will now be older than Edward. Bella’s dad Charlie (Billy Burke) ribs her about her unsettled response to aging, as does Edward, while Alice is just overjoyed to be able to throw a birthday party for someone.

Bella’s misgivings about this plan stem from her own aversion to growing older, but it’s soon apparent that a birthday party in a house full of vampires is inadvisable for other reasons. A minor mishap leaves Bella bleeding and nearly lunch for Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), who hasn’t quite mastered the ability to control himself around human blood. It’s enough to convince Edward that she is fundamentally unsafe in his company, so he leaves, icily informing her that the family will be moving on, that she isn’t invited to join them and that she will never hear from them again.

The bulk of the movie involves Bella gradually moving away from her soul-deadened state. At first she moves through her days on auto-pilot, and night terrors torture her - and frighten her concerned dad - when the sun goes down. Still, somewhere deep down, she clings to the thought that Edward and Alice, who she misses nearly as much, will return one day. So when Charlie tells her he thinks she should move to Jacksonville to be with her mother and get away from the environment associated with so much sadness, she realizes that she needs to snap out of it if she ever wants to see them again.

On an outing with bubble-headed frenemy Jessica (Anna Kendrick), she discovers that when she is in a dangerous situation, Edward appears to her. Whether it’s just a product of her own imagination matters little, so deep is her craving for just the tiniest hint of Edward. This leads her to motorcycle mechanic Jacob (Taylor Lautner), the family friend who is as warm and jovial as Edward is cold and stiff. Lautner bulked up quite noticeably between the first two movies. There was talk of replacing the actor because he didn’t seem grown-up enough, but Lautner proves his mettle here in a performance that allows him to be both vulnerable and masculine while balancing his love for Bella with his strange new brotherhood with other members of the Quileute tribe. Like LOST’s Sawyer, he has a habit of taking his shirt off at every opportunity, and he’s got the muscles and the tan to pull it off. When Edward’s shirt comes off after we finally see him again toward the end of the movie, it’s not such a pretty sight.

This movie switches directors to Chris Weitz, which changes the tone a bit. In some cases, that’s good. For instance, the green-tinted scenery problem of Twilight is not present here; the cinematography looks much more natural, except during the action sequences, and then the special effects look pretty cheesy. Sadly, the sound mixing is, if anything, even worse in this second movie; not only does the music drown out the dialogue, but so do rainstorms and other ambient sounds. I wish I’d had the subtitles on because I know I missed a few things.

Speaking of which, my parents, whose knowledge of the books is limited to what little I’ve told them, frequently found the movie confusing, and I had to explain plot points to them. This suggests to me that the screenplay did not do a very good job of laying things out for those who don’t have book knowledge to help them connect the dots. And as in the book, the misunderstanding that precipitates Edward’s decision to seek out the Volturi is a pretty flimsy thing to hang the climax on. Additionally, while the violence is still pretty limited, there is a bit more of it than in the first movie.

On the plus side, we get a lot more of Alice in this movie, even if Ashley Greene still is only on the screen for maybe a quarter of the movie. This funky, effervescent counterpoint to all of Bella and Edward’s brooding just makes me smile every time she appears, even when she makes a couple of less than gracious remarks about Jacob, whose tribe has long been at odds with vampires. Just the device of Bella’s imaginary correspondence brings Alice’s character into greater prominence, which I appreciated.

I continued to enjoy Burke’s performance as the gruff but doting Charlie and, despite the brevity of his scenes, quickly grew fond of The Red Green Show’s Graham Greene’s chummy Harry Clearwater, one of Charlie’s closest friends. I also liked the introduction of Michael Sheen as the intriguing Aro, the member of the Volturi who does the most talking in the electrifying scene in which Edward, Bella and Alice have a private audience with them. He’s charming and has a giddy quality about him that almost reminds me of Arthur Weasley, Ron’s Muggle-loving dad in the Harry Potter series, but there’s also something deeply dangerous about him, as we see most plainly in an almost blink-and-you-miss-it scene that marks the conclusion of Bella’s whirlwind trip to Italy.

In retrospect, I tend to think of the first two books in this series largely as set-up for the last two, which I find much more compelling and less self-involved from Bella’s perspective. I don’t find Bella quite as insufferable in the movie version of New Moon, largely because there’s just not nearly as much time for her to moan about the heart-shaped hole in her chest. The movie only squeezes in two or three references in comparison to the book’s dozens of mentions. By the same token, while she still turns into a bit of an adrenaline junkie in the movie, she only does three really dangerous things before Alice shows up at her door to find out whether the suicide she thought she saw in one of her visions was actually true. So she’s easier to put up with here, though I still find her annoying.

Ultimately, I think I would mostly agree with my dad, who said he didn’t like the second movie as much as the first, but I did like it better than the book, and I think it sets us up nicely for the more interesting story to come in the third. I’m ready when you are, Netflix...

Prepare to get LOST in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

As LOST winds to a close, I have found myself seeking comparisons with my favorite show in every movie that I watch. When it comes to Tim Burton’s vision of Alice in Wonderland, I hardly need to look. Indeed, it’s one of the reasons I was so interested in the movie, though I’ve always found various incarnations to be trippy to the point of being rather terrifying. Lewis Carroll’s classic story is indisputably one of LOST‘s key texts, having been referenced explicitly in two episode titles (White Rabbit and Through the Looking Glass) and multiple times within the show.

The very first image in the series is of heroic doctor Jack Shephard opening his eyes in the middle of the jungle. There exists the possibility that the series could end this way, with the implication that all six seasons have been a dream. While I will feel extremely cheated if this is the case, the heavy influence of Alice in Wonderland makes me nervous, especially when coupled with another key text, The Wizard of Oz, which happens to be the next movie Tim Burton is thinking of helming. While in the books, Oz is a real place, the iconic 1939 film implies that it’s just as much a dream as Wonderland is in the book.

In Burton’s film, it’s never entirely clear whether Wonderland is, in fact, a dream. We never see Alice fall asleep or wake up. But as in The Wizard of Oz, connections are drawn between several people from her everyday life and various characters she meets in Wonderland. Moreover, throughout her adventure, she repeatedly insists that she is in a dream. At one point, she and the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), who in this version is her most cherished Wonderland companion, share a conversation about the subject. She informs him that he is a figment of her imagination, and that only someone half-mad like her could have dreamed him up, which is strikingly similar to what Hurley tells Libby in Dave, the season two episode that either debunks an unpalatable theory or explains the series. “In real life,” Hurley says, “no girl like you would ever like me. Remember when I said I knew you from somewhere? Well, maybe it's because I made you up.”

Hurley is the character most associated with childlike innocence but also with mental instability. In season four, he theorizes that only he, Ben and John are able to see the elusive cabin in the jungle because they are the craziest. Could all of the bizarre happenings on the Island be the product of a deranged mind? The same question applies to Wonderland. Mia Wasikowska is luminous as Alice, a confused young woman who is overwhelmed by the world around her and the responsibilities being forced upon her. Easily distracted by her daydreams, she possesses an independent spirit unwelcome in her stuffy society.

Burton does his best to make the Wonderland to which she escapes look and sound as disorienting as possible. Depp, who is so adept at portraying vividly eccentric characters, embodies the insanity of this world as a man prone to lapsing into strings of incoherent psychobabble. And even when his tongue doesn’t run away with his mind, everything he says is as off-kilter as his voice, which is sometimes a guttural Scottish growl, sometimes a lisping whisper. Meanwhile, he repeatedly poses the query, “Have you any idea why a raven is like a writing desk?”, a riddle which, like many of the mysteries on LOST, seems to have no solution.

On LOST, the first explicit reference to Alice in Wonderland comes when Jack pursues his deceased father through the jungle and John compares the specter to the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen). Alice, too, has lost her father, the one person in her life who understood her and regarded her “madness” as a mark of a superior mind. As she chases this strange creature, one might say that she, too, is seeking her father, or at least a connection with their shared sense of the fantastic.

Alice finds herself in a world ruled over by two queens of opposing dispositions. The Red Queen (Helena Bonham-Carter, one of four Harry Potter alums in the film) is an unstable tyrant prone to doling out violent punishments. Meanwhile the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), all grace and benevolence, resides in a kingdom reminiscent of Tolkien’s Elven haven Rivendell. She strives against her sister but is incapable of harming another, nor will she force anyone else to do so, although her desires are usually fairly evident. These white and red monarchs are much like the white and black figures controlling so many of the events on the Island, and when Alice explodes in frustration that ever since her arrival in Wonderland she has been told what to do and who to be, it sounds an awful lot like LOST‘s driving Fate vs Free Will debate.

Another recurring theme on the show has to do with characters on the Island crossing paths back in the everyday world. There’s a sense that even if there is a multiplicity of worlds, these particular people are destined to always be a part of one another’s lives. The first character to state this explicitly is conflicted torturer Sayid’s star-crossed love Nadia, but starting with the second season, the sentiment becomes the catchphrase of unanchored Scotsman Desmond. “See you in another life,” he says, time and again. In the movie, Absolem the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), a creature inextricably linked with the notion of transformation, repeats this very phrase after explaining to Alice that she arrived as the “wrong Alice” but is now her proper self. Another driving theme in LOST involves flawed characters embracing the best of themselves as a result of many trials.

Of course, though I recommend it particularly to fans of the show, you don’t have to watch LOST to appreciate this movie. It offers a new twist on an old tale and does so with plenty of eye-popping spectacle. Though the 3-D elements seem less organic than in Avatar, they add to the fun, particularly whenever the March Hare (Paul Whitehouse) takes it into his head to lob a piece of dinnerware in the audience’s direction. The film often feels freakish, but as I remarked to my parents, any worthwhile adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is going to wind up looking a lot like an acid trip. It’s a strange, strange journey, but it’s one worth making, especially if you, like Alice and her father, have ever had the inclination to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

Frost / Nixon Is At Its Best When the Leads Play Hardball

Last year, I was so ready for the Oscars, I managed to see every contender for Best Picture, not to mention quite a few nominees in other categories. This year, I was much more lax. One of the movies that fell by the wayside was Frost / Nixon, which piqued my curiosity, but not enough to make it essential viewing. I amended this oversight today.

Frost / Nixon, originally a stage play with the same two stars, was written by Peter Morgan, and the film is directed by Ron Howard, who has helmed some of my favorite movies, including the underrated Far and Away. Michael Sheen, who portrays intrepid interviewer David Frost, won me over as Tony Blair in 2006’s The Queen; he seems to have a knack for playing real-life wet-behind-the-ears personages. And I’d seen enough of Frank Langella as disgraced President Richard Nixon to be impressed with the way he embodies such an iconic role.

More than anything, this movie boils down to the two of them, together or apart, carefully plotting out what they will say to each other as teams of advisors hover fretfully. Their tactical maneuvers put me in mind of a boxing match, with Frost the Rocky-like underdog trying to find his adversary’s weak spot. I’ve always thought of Nixon, especially during this time period, as an unscrupulous, defeated figure, but throughout most of the movie he comes across as confident, courteous, charismatic and witty.

As I watched his interaction with Frost, I also found myself thinking of V, the sci-fi series that recently began airing on ABC. In both cases, the journalist is called upon to refrain from asking uncomfortable questions. The task falls to Frost to figure out how to prompt illuminating answers without enraging his subject. As when he played Blair, Sheen shows us a man who seems in over his head, suddenly thrust into a spotlight much too big for him. There’s less verbal ping-pong than the previews led me to believe, since all of the juiciest bits occur during the last portion of their interview, which stretched over several days.

Hence, the movie has a slow build to it that may try the patience of some. It’s interesting to get a peek into all of the background work that goes into an interview like this - weeks of research, millions of dollars in expenditures. But during most of their encounters, the two men are quite cordial to each other; it’s a good hour and a half before the sparring starts in earnest. Even when it’s all over with, there’s a definite sense of mutual respect.

Among the supporting cast, the clear standout is Kevin Bacon as Jack Brennan, Nixon’s deeply devoted, extremely conservative wingman. He proves an even greater stumbling block to Frost than Nixon himself, as he exercises constant vigilance in his attempts to protect the former President’s good name. On the other side of the fence is Bob Zelnick, Frost’s right-hand man. Portrayed by Oliver Platt, he’s a bundle of jokey energy, always trying to lessen the tension with a laugh but quite obviously concerned that this project could kill his career.

Rebecca Hall turns in a nice performance as Caroline Cushing, the sweet Englishwoman who quickly falls into Frost’s inner circle. Unfortunately, as a fan of Diane Sawyer (played by Kate Jennings Grant), I was disappointed in how little this ace reporter was given to do. It almost made me wonder why she was even included as a character.












If you have an interest in the role of the media in shaping society’s opinions, Frost / Nixon is a fascinating film to watch. While bits of it are a tad dry and dozy, the movie as a whole is an intriguing peek at an important slice of recent history, anchored by two outstanding performances.

When the Princess Dies, The Queen is Thrown Into Crisis

My parents grew up in the turbulent sixties, when tragedies such as the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. seemed to occur with alarming frequency, riveting a nation whenever they did. By the time I came along in 1981, things had settled down somewhat, so there are few single newsworthy events from the last two decades of the 20th century that stand out in my memory. The death of Princess Diana is one of those. I couldn't ever remember having seen so many people so overwhelmed with anguish, and though I hadn't previously paid that much attention to the affairs of the royals, I found myself very emotionally involved. I suspect that was the case for many.

Now that a decade has passed, a film about the extraordinary events of that week can be viewed with some detachment, though I was flooded with memories as I watched The Queen, the drama about how stodgy Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) and freshly minted Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) dealt with the unprecedented outpouring of grief over the terrible accident. The movie utilizes clips of press coverage from the time but mostly focuses on what was happening behind the scenes.

Mirren gives a wonderfully understated performance as the queen who helped bring her country through World War II and has remained a dignified and intelligent figurehead all these decades later. Initially, she comes across as unreasonably stiff, but she soon becomes a laudable figure struggling to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world. And she's not all starch and pomp, either; I was surprised to see her driving a sporty vehicle and tromping around in the countryside with her dogs. In the end, the portrait we get of the queen is a very sympathetic one, despite her sometimes frustrating degree of restraint.

Tony Blair comes off even better, and while Sheen doesn't look all that much like him, he captures his energy and optimism. We watch him try to come to terms with the monarchy's lack of interest in engaging with the public during what he increasingly perceives as a national crisis. Though he desperately wants the queen to acknowledge the mood of the country, he is disgusted by the way the people have turned on their monarch, slamming her in all of the papers. Even his wife (Helen McCrory) rarely has a kind word for her, speaking of her much like Mrs. Cratchit speaks of Ebenezer Scrooge. Indeed, of all the characters featured in prominence, she came across as the least likable, always sniping about something. It was not a flattering portrayal.

Prince Philip (James Cromwell), meanwhile, was presented as a cantankerous old grump, but one can hardly blame him; if the queen feels like an anachronism, poor Prince Philip must feel downright invisible most of the time. While I merely found Cherie Blair obnoxious, the prince was somehow endearing in the midst of all his grumbling, partly because I've loved Cromwell ever since Babe, partly because it's obvious that he cares deeply about his family, even if he has a hard time openly displaying his emotions.

Prince Charles (Alex Jennings), deeply bereaved despite the dissolution of his marriage to Diana a year earlier, seems like a lost little boy attempting, in the midst of his own sorrow, to address the needs of his people and to assert himself to his authoritarian mother, while the queen's advisor, Robert Janvrin (Roger Allam), gradually comes to understand that on this matter, the queen's instincts may not serve her as well as they usually do. Meanwhile, the feisty Queen Mum (Sylvia Sims) observes all the goings-on, and as she complains that no one ever lets her know what's happening, she completes the family dynamic and it's easy to see the Windsors are not so different from the rest of us after all.

This is a beautiful film that offers an intimate look at a private family in the public eye. Long live The Queen!