Category Archives: NaPoWriMo

50 First Dates (2004)

14 Saturday Apr 2018

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was for an imaginary dream dictionary using one or more of some suggested terms. So I used them all, with only the last stanza tying into the movie.)

 

If you dream of a teacup,
It means that you thirst
For something that’s fragile and needs to be nursed.

If you dream of a hammer,
It means you deplore
Nails, or maybe you want to be Thor.

If you dream of a seagull,
It means that you wish
To swoop over beaches and swallow some fish.

If you dream of a slipper
For ballet, it means
You want to perform in some graceful routines.

If you dream of a shark,
It means you should swim
Or else you may well end up inside of him.

If you dream of a dentist,
It indicates dread.
You shouldn’t watch Marathon Man close to bed.

If you dream of a table
That’s wobbly, I’d peg
You as someone unstable and needing a leg.

If you dream of a rowboat,
It means or it shows
You’re rowing, I guess? Oh, come on, who knows?

If you dream of a stranger
You love, then it means
It might be the face of the love of your dreams.
_________________

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for much sexual humor)

It’s rare that a movie morphs from something I actively dislike to something I love. Of course, it’s always better when it goes in that order (rather than going from love to hate), but such movies with a split personality are a weird achievement. I’m not familiar with most of Adam Sandler’s movies since what little I’ve seen has convinced me they’re not my preferred humor, but 50 First Dates elevates his usual crassness with a romantic story that left me genuinely smiling by the end.

Sandler plays Henry Roth, a veterinarian at a Hawaiian marine park, whose favorite pastime is a constant stream of one-night stands with visiting tourists. Then one day, he meets a girl named Lucy (Drew Barrymore) at a diner and hits it off, charming her and agreeing to meet there again the next day. When he does, she acts like they’ve never met, and he learns from her friends and family that she was in a car accident and now suffers from short-term memory loss, forgetting everything from the previous day when she falls asleep. Perhaps intrigued by the prospect of wooing a human Dory, Henry endeavors to make her fall in love with him day after day, not always with success but with an ever-growing desire to form a lasting relationship against all odds.

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I suppose I’m reminded of Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom, which started out garish and strange yet became more and more romantic and endearing as it went. Likewise, 50 First Dates possesses plenty of crude sexual metaphors and a vomiting walrus, mainly in the first half, but then comes a moment when the true weight of Lucy’s condition becomes clear, and the vulgar comedy takes a backseat. In his efforts to win Lucy’s heart repeatedly, Henry displays rare selflessness and commitment, and the ways he tries to give Lucy a life beyond a constant repeat are increasingly sweet and gratifying, especially in the final scene.

It isn’t easy for me to view Sandler in a leading-man romantic role, but 50 First Dates proves his ability in that regard, if only he’d dispense with the phallic jokes. I did still laugh, and he and Barrymore had strong chemistry (though I still see her more with Hugh Grant, thanks to Music and Lyrics), so I see why this is reportedly one of their favorite films together. I’m curious now to see their previous collaboration in The Wedding Singer, which I’ve heard is one of Sandler’s best films.

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As far as the supporting actors, Henry’s stoner friend Ula (Rob Schneider) was a little annoying, but I did appreciate the unexpected appearance of Sean Astin as Lucy’s steroid-obsessed brother with a lisp and Dan Aykroyd as her doctor. Ultimately, 50 First Dates is not consistent enough to be an instant rom-com favorite like You’ve Got Mail or Serendipity, but, even with its weaknesses, I can’t help but admire a film that left me as extremely satisfied as this one did.

Best line: (Ula’s caddy) “I wouldn’t surf with a bleeding wound like that. You might attract a shark or something.”
(Ula) “What’s wrong with that, cuz? Sharks are naturally peaceful.”
(Caddy) “Is that right? How’d you get that nasty cut anyway?”
(Ula) “A shark bit me.”

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2018 S.G. Liput
555 Followers and Counting

 

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

13 Friday Apr 2018

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem based on the reverse of a well-known phrase or saying, so I picked “home is where the heart is.”)

 

The mind is rarely where the home is,
Always drawn back here, back there,
To sites of sorrows, times of traumas,
Every missed or broken promise,
Every frightened, whispered prayer,
And doubts that dwarf the likes of Thomas.

Although it wishes peace to find,
The night is haunted by the day,
And progress can be undermined
By ghosts we thought we’d left behind.
The battlefields still hold their sway
When hearts go home without the mind.
_________________

MPAA rating: Not Rated (should be PG)

This post is by request of MovieRob, who gave the most correct answers to my new banner challenge and so earned the right to have me review a film of his choice. It’s also a chance to review something not from the last couple years, which seems to be all I’ve been reviewing lately. I knew The Best Years of Our Lives was one of his all-time favorites, and it is a film that still packs an emotional wallop even 72 years later, offering an authentic glimpse of how World War II veterans readjusted to civilian life.

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Perfectly timed when it came out the year after the war ended, The Best Years of Our Lives follows three ex-servicemen returning to their fictional hometown of Boone City: an older sergeant and banker named Al Stephenson (Fredric March), a newly married captain named Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), and an amputee from the Navy named Homer Parrish (real amputee Harold Russell), who lost both hands and now uses a pair of hook prosthetics. Although all are eager to return home, they quickly experience difficulties in adjusting to their new civilian roles, such as Fred’s lack of experience in anything but the bombing for which he was trained or Homer’s insecurity over how his family and sweetheart will react to his hooks.

The performances are excellent across the board, rarely falling into dated overacting, with Russell especially standing out as Homer, well deserving his Best Supporting Actor Oscar despite not being a professional actor. (He’s also the only actor to win two Oscars for the same role, one an honorary award, and the only one to auction his Oscar years later.) March also won an Oscar, though I personally thought he was better in 1937’s A Star Is Born, and the film received five other Academy Awards too, including Best Picture. Above all, the story feels genuine, as if these were real stories that actually played out in the post-war period, even including how businesses and conspiracists viewed the war and the shaken people it sent back home.

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Despite being a significant film and one of the best in its genre, I do feel The Best Years of Our Lives, at 170 minutes, runs about twenty minutes too long, and not all three of its stories carry the same weight. Homer’s is easily the best with a profoundly lump-inducing conclusion, while Fred’s love triangle with his shallow wife (Virginia Mayo) and Al’s daughter Peggy (lovely Teresa Wright) has its moments. So does Al’s homecoming, but his drunkenness drags on a bit with little resolution, even if I’m sure it’s a true depiction of the way many veterans tried to cope.

The Best Years of Our Lives may run long, but it’s a moving portrait of post-war America and the problems that plagued her veterans, which still ring true due to the permanence of war. One image near the end seems to capture the potential hopelessness of their situation, as Fred sits in the nose of a scrapped plane with no engines, grounded and heading nowhere. Yet it subtly says even more that right afterward, he learns the scrapyard will be recycled into new housing, a symbol of the renewal capable for men as well.

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Best line: (Fred) “I dreamed I was gonna have my own home. Just a nice little house for my wife and me out in the country… in the suburbs anyway. That’s the cock-eyed kind of dream you have when you’re overseas.”   (Peggy) “You don’t have to be overseas to have dreams like that.”   (Fred) “Yeah. You can get crazy ideas right here at home.”

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2018 S.G. Liput
554 Followers and Counting

 

Bad Lucky Goat (2017)

12 Thursday Apr 2018

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was for a haibun, a Japanese combination of prose and haiku. Instead of focusing on my unremarkable current environment, as the prompt suggested, I thought I’d try the Caribbean setting of this offbeat film.)

 

The ocean exhales the tide as if to cover every island,
Only to breathe back in lest its favorite peaks be lost.
Life goes on, trusting
That the sea will catch his breath.
Do islands hold theirs?
____________________

MPAA rating: Not Rated (PG-13 or maybe even PG)

Another selection from last year’s South by Southwest, Bad Lucky Goat might be best described as Adventures in Babysitting, island-style. Except that instead of babysitting kids, it’s a goat’s corpse. Doesn’t that sound like fun? What’s also unusual about this Colombian movie is that there’s plenty of English but you absolutely will need subtitles, because all the characters speak in such a thick Caribbean patois dialect that it’s hard to believe they can understand each other.

The ones doing the goatsitting are brother and sister Corn (Honlenny Huffington) and Rita (Kiara Howard), who are clearly the type of siblings who don’t get along. While on an errand for their parents, Rita accidentally runs over a goat, and they are faced with covering up both the truck repair and the body disposal. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Adventures in Babysitting as they try to gather money to pay off the mechanic and even face the threat of kidnapping. Yet, there’s more realism and exotic charm than outright comedy, and it certainly captures a poor but unique way of life, one where cock fights are still popular and a troupe of shirtless musicians make music with improvised instruments and random objects while chest-deep in a bayou.

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Occasionally, it got old watching Corn and Rita argue almost the entire time, but their eventual reconciliation felt genuine in spite of their sibling quarrels. Unless you actively love goats, they’re also sympathetic enough to hope they resolve their ever worsening problems, though Rita’s pilfering of a church collection plate lost a lot of my sympathy.

I don’t know that I’d ever seek it out again, but Bad Lucky Goat was a singularly quirky film with a likably meandering plot, some Rastafarian superstition, and a distinctive island flavor. In addition to the upbeat reggae soundtrack (much of it courtesy of Robinson and the Lazy Hill Band), the direction from film school graduate Samir Oliveros is colorful and polished with a few nice tracking shots I wouldn’t expect from a low-budget film funded as a Kickstarter project. It’s a laid-back little movie that’s only 76 minutes long, well worth a look if you’re in the mood for something different from the usual Hollywood fare.

 

Rank: Honorable Mention

 

© 2018 S.G. Liput
554 Followers and Counting

 

When We First Met (2018)

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was for a poem addressing our future state, which, of course, is rather hard to predict.)

 

The Present Me’s aware of things the Past Me would have wished he knew,
So Present Me is wondering if Future Me has secrets too.
The Future Me will only say that joys, regrets, and shocks await,
But will not pity Present Me enough to just elaborate.
And that is why the Present Me won’t bother with the Future Me
Until the one becomes the other simply through maturity.
______________________

MPAA rating: TV-14 (a.k.a. PG-13)

I’m always partial to movies featuring time travel, so I couldn’t resist checking out this Netflix film that echoes Groundhog Day. What I’m not partial to is lead actor Adam DeVine, who I greatly disliked as the self-absorbed Bumper in the first Pitch Perfect (he was a little better in the second), but When We First Met revealed his surprisingly likable side.

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DeVine plays Noah Ashby, who grieves the engagement of his crush Avery (Alexandra Daddario) and her pretty boy fiancé Ethan (Robbie Amell). He reminisces of how he first met Avery at a Halloween party three years earlier, only to be relegated to the friend zone. After some drunken moping, Noah enters a photo booth from their first date and finds himself three years in the past with another chance at a first impression, which takes a few tries to get right, as you may imagine.

There are definite similarities to Groundhog Day in the way Noah replays the same events at the party and uses the knowledge he gains from the repeated do-overs, but one original aspect is that he then gets to see how the changes to the timeline play out, since he then jumps ahead three years to see the unintended consequences. It’s a clever concept with some inconsistencies in execution and logic, but the cast and humor go a long way in making it work, with DeVine boasting everyman appeal and Daddario being unnaturally gorgeous.

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Unfortunately, even the good elements are inconsistent. One section in the middle where Noah tries the jerk boyfriend approach became embarrassingly unfunny and just reminded me of how much I disliked DeVine as Bumper. Yet it then bounced back to end on a sweet note that some may call predictable but still kept me invested. When We First Met is unlikely to become a perennial favorite like Groundhog Day, but it’s not a bad variation on the time travel tropes I so enjoy.

Best line: (Noah’s friend Max, with a sentiment I only half agree with) “Things happen for no reason at all, but they create opportunities.”

 

Rank: Honorable Mention

 

© 2018 S.G. Liput
554 Followers and Counting

 

The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)

10 Tuesday Apr 2018

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was for a poem featuring simultaneity, where more than one thing happens at the same time, a concept I applied to a writer’s creative process.)

 

The writer sat in the market square,
But that’s not all he did.
He bade “Good day” to Mrs. Wise
And fed the pigeons gathered there
And made a cat jump with surprise
And watched the vendors sell their wares.
To outward eyes,
He just sat there,
But that’s not all he did.

The mind inside the writer’s head
Was hard at work within,
Populating worlds unwritten,
Raising heroes from the dead,
Lads in love and lasses smitten,
Tales of kings that none had read,
Smiles to fit in,
Tears to shed,
And all unseen within.

So though he seemed to waste the day,
Just sitting as he did,
The writer had done no such thing.
He watched the world at work and play
And gleaned its ample offering
To shape what only he could say.
His loitering
Seemed like delay,
But that’s not all he did.
__________________

MPAA rating: PG

Considering how much I love A Christmas Carol and movies about literature, I was excited for The Man Who Invented Christmas, a yuletide biopic about Charles Dickens’ tumultuous writing of his most famous work. While I liked it quite a bit, I wonder if my hopes were too high since it wasn’t the instant classic I had thought it might be. I can’t say I was disappointed since it lived up to its trailer at least, but it didn’t surpass any of my expectations either.

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Dickens, played by Dan Stevens, hits a wall when his fame and fortune are diminished by three commercial flops in a row. After contending with writer’s block, the sight of a rich man’s funeral gives him the seed of an idea, and what the world will eventually know as A Christmas Carol speedily develops in his mind as he rushes to get it written and printed in time for Christmas sales. Along the way, he contends with his spendthrift father (Jonathan Pryce), his own past trauma, and his characters mentally coming to life, including a critical Scrooge (Christopher Plummer).

I must say that Stevens is outstanding, playing Dickens with just the right amount of ego and eccentricity, the way we imagine many creative geniuses might have been. When he entertains his children with random voices, I could imagine Robin Williams playing this role thirty years ago. Likewise, I loved the visualization of his creative process, as he interacts with characters only he can see, only to have them vanish when he is all-too-often interrupted. The story also provides a glimpse into Dickens’ difficult childhood, offering insights into what made him the ambitious but compassionate man he was, and it was interesting to see how his original plan for an unhappy ending yielded to others’ hopes and beliefs that even the worst men can change.See the source imageSo, yes, I did enjoy it, including its lesson of forgiveness and the reminder of how Dickens shaped the Christmas holiday we know today, which was not as vigorously celebrated back then. I suppose the weakest aspect was Pryce as Dickens’ father John, whose good nature is undermined by drunkenness and financial waste as he mooches off his son. Despite John’s good intentions, I didn’t blame Charles much for snapping at him at one point, and it didn’t seem entirely right that Charles is in the wrong and apologizes with little change seen on his father’s part.

Despite that objection, I’ll still gladly watch The Man Who Invented Christmas if it comes on TV around Christmastime to enjoy its well-acted, wholesome glimpse into the mind of a great author. I’m just a little sad that there was something lacking, which will make me more likely to just watch some version of A Christmas Carol instead of the story behind it.

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2018 S.G. Liput
552 Followers and Counting

 

Girls und Panzer der Film (2015)

09 Monday Apr 2018

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to combine something big and something small, like maybe tanks and girls for example. Inspired by this silly anime, I wrote a fake account of how tank warfare might become a girls’ sport.)

 

Years past, the tanks rolled into town
And terrorized the folk.
With dread renown,
Each new crackdown
Would paint the sky in smoke.

They came in force to crash and kill
And crush with cannon fire.
Such lethal will
They did fulfill;
The people’s need was dire.

One fateful day, a young girl eyed
An empty tank left bare.
She seized with pride
This chance supplied
By carelessness and prayer.

Against all odds and common sense,
She drove the tank somehow.
Her zeal intense,
In her town’s defense,
She raised every eyebrow.

She shocked the foe, confused their ranks,
And drove them from the land;
And it’s all thanks
To her that tanks
And girls go hand in hand.
_____________________

MPAA rating: Not Rated (PG is fine)

Anime has given us a lot of weird and wonderful concepts over the years, the kind you should just enjoy for their silliness and not think about too deeply, but making tank warfare a girl’s sport takes the cake for me. Even though I’ve never been particularly fond of tanks or the cute girl genre, Girls und Panzer was an admittedly fun ride, made even more fun by its big-screen follow-up.

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The 2012 TV series featured a ragtag group of girls from Ōarai High School rallying under the leadership of skilled but reluctant transfer student Miho in order to win a series of tank war games and stave off the closing of their school and town, which happen to be on top of a giant aircraft carrier (yes, really). The characters are simple and likable, with most development reserved for Miho and her four closest friends. The rest of the vast cast gets the most basic development possible as members of other clubs that nonetheless contribute to the tank warfare, which seems to use real ammunition and has no regard for property damage, since the government underwrites everything as an official sport. The set-up is enjoyable enough, but the real draw here is the tank battles, explosive clashes between war machines that are depicted with surprising historical accuracy for the most part. At only twelve episodes long, the series is short but doesn’t lack thrills, as the underdog Ōarai team faces off against more accomplished high school teams that each conform to the trappings and tactics of a different nation (Americans, Russians, Italians, Germans, etc.).

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If any of this sounds entertaining, go watch it because it’s nice and short, and I’m about to spoil the ending. It’s probably no surprise, but Ōarai wins. Yet the movie doesn’t let that victory stand for long; one exhibition match later, the government is eager to shut the school down again, putting Ōarai in the exact same position of betting their school’s fate on a giant tank battle, this time against a University team. With this battle, however, they’re so hopelessly outmatched that their former rivals beaten during the series come to their aid and take part in one big tank free-for-all.

Like the series, there is some confusion at times over who’s in which tank, and what’s happening is not always as clear as it should be. Yet the battles are still quite well planned, putting different styles of tank to good use and employing some very clever strategy along the way. (One planning session between the allied teams is like an argument between the tactical methods of all the major countries of World War II.) While the show had some semblance of realism in the tank’s capabilities, albeit small, the movie goes full-out bonkers with tanks flying through the air, sliding down rollercoaster tracks, and zooming around like high-capacity bumper cars. Some of the casualties would carry more weight if anyone was actually in danger, but that apparently never happens in this sport, and it’s perfectly fine to stick your head out the top hatch while being shelled (really).

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This isn’t the first anime film I’d recommend to anyone, but it’s now high on my list of guilty pleasures just for how gleefully crazy and bombastic it gets. By the time the battle moves into a theme park to use the rides as unconventional weapons, I was just enjoying the outlandishness of it all, and finding unexpected satisfaction with every enemy tank disabled. Sure, it’s silly and predictable, but that’s sometimes the very definition of fun. There’s a whole future series of films planned, but it’s hard to imagine how they’ll top this one.

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2018 S.G. Liput
552 Followers and Counting

Here’s a good representation of what to expect, if you’re curious:
 

Chronesthesia (Love and Time Travel) (2016)

08 Sunday Apr 2018

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was for a poem involving mystery and magic, so I went with an idea about the magical mundane, which kind of applies to the movie too.)

 

“My life is just a gear at work, a daily push and pull;
I’m far too busy living life to find it magical.
I’m like a mule with blinders on, who only knows the road,
While fields stretch out on every side and might relieve my load.
I’d like to turn my head, but I don’t have the will or time
To care for what’s outside myself when there’s a hill to climb.”

What does it take to rouse such men from marching to their tombs,
To wake them to the magic that around their bubble looms?
A glimpse into the future or a strange phenomenon,
Or simply noticing the world and those by whom it’s drawn?
When life seems more a burden than the gift it should be, try
Roads you don’t know or say hello and see where wonders lie.
_____________________

MPAA rating: Not Rated (probably R, just for language)

Independent movies are funny things: you never know when one is going to be a pretentious bore or a down-to-earth charmer, but the charmers are always a pleasant surprise. Such is Chronesthesia, a New Zealand import that was given the name Love and Time Travel when released to other countries. It’s a film that I think should put debuting writer/director/star Hayden J. Weal on the map, proving alongside Peter Jackson and Taika Waititi that New Zealand is home to some first-rate filmmakers.

As the beginning states, chronesthesia is “a mental ability enabling awareness of one’s own future. In short, mental time travel.” Weal plays Daniel Duncombe (who at times reminded me of both Chris Pratt and Martin Freeman, strangely enough), a gloomy barista who seems none too eager to break out of his stagnant existence. He’s the sort who would rather jog alone than say a word to a stranger, keeping his earbuds in to avoid conversations. Then one day, he discovers the words “Turn Right” written on his bedroom window, followed by similarly enigmatic messages like “Alleyway” and “He misses her.” Before long, these mysterious notes lead him to meet new people and discover the unexpected connections between them.

See the source imageThat description may sound vague and generic, but it really is a story that is best experienced firsthand. Whether it’s an old man in search of someone or a young girl with a crush, everyone Dan meets helps him grow in some way, and watching him shed his taciturn cocoon was a joy to watch unfold. The biggest relationship he forms is a romance with a psychology student named Sophia (Michelle Ny), one that feels as natural as all screen romances should try to be, and she becomes a patient advocate of sympathy for those with mental illness, such as a friend of hers with schizophrenia.

Chronesthesia may hint at it strongly, but there’s very little in the way of actual science fiction here, with the time travel aspect mostly relegated to unconscious “trips” of jerkily edited flashbacks (or flashforwards). If you’re hoping for some serious sci-fi or even an explanation for Dan’s ability, you’ll be disappointed, but in this case, the time flashes are secondary to the relatable human story at work, one full of supportive empathy and improbable serendipity. The only actor I recognized was Julian Dennison, the young boy from Hunt for the Wilderpeople, but every actor does a marvelous job, particularly Weal with his gradual blossoming of humanity.See the source imageIn many ways, this is the kind of movie I just tend to like, mingling sci-fi or fantasy elements with an overarching lesson about the interconnectedness of mankind, much in the vein of fellow indie gems Shuffle and Ink. While this too is a low-budget film, it doesn’t look it, boasting lovely cinematography and a beautiful classical score as well. The script is also fraught with worthwhile themes of interpersonal connection, such as the value of listening to those in society everyone else might dismiss. Of course, there are things I could have done without, such as the unnecessary profanity, but this is a satisfying film that has only improved with time and thought, an underrated gem that deserves to be more widely known.

Best line: (Sophia) “You have no idea how much your actions affect the people around you. People have a lot more influence than they realize.”

 
Rank: List-Worthy

 
© 2018 S.G. Liput
551 Followers and Counting

 

The Breadwinner (2017)

07 Saturday Apr 2018

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to write a confrontation between a personal strength and a personal weakness, so I focused on anxiety.)

 

The me of my dreams aimed a finger at me,
Displaying the courage I lacked,
And said, “What do you know you of anxiety?
Why let it control how you act?

“Why live in the fear of a stranger’s outlook
When they have no sway over you?
Are there not enough lessons in movie and book
For self-confidence to ring true?

If someone outside you could see how you hide you
And all of your faith and desires,
They’d pity your doubts and perhaps stay beside you
To prove that not all are deniers.

“Are you not aware there are people elsewhere
Who endure terror dwarfing your own,
Whose lives are at risk based on what they must wear
And feel much more truly alone?

“They know what fear is, while you worry and stall
With freedom they may never know.
Compared with them, our troubles now seem so small,
Unworthy of fear; treat them so.”
____________________

MPAA rating: PG-13

While there’s plenty to criticize the Academy for, especially in the Best Animated Feature category, the nomination of The Breadwinner was well-deserved. While it couldn’t hope to match Pixar’s all-around excellence with Coco, this is a prime example of what ought to be in the running for Best Animated Feature. Following up on their fantasy-filled The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, Irish animation house Cartoon Saloon (along with a collection of co-production companies) tackles a far more serious and realistic story based on a Deborah Ellis children’s novel.

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Parvana is the daughter of a former schoolteacher in Afghanistan, which is plagued by the oppressive rules of the Taliban. When her father is arrested with no charge, there is nothing Parvana, her older sister, or their mother can do, since none of them are even allowed to leave their home without the presence of a male relative. (Parvana’s little brother is too young to help.) Left with no other option, Parvana cuts her hair and masquerades as a boy in order to earn enough to support her family and perhaps even save her father from prison.

While Cartoon Saloon’s previous films were set in Ireland with an art style that echoed the swirly motifs true to that country, it’s amazing how well the style translates to the Arab setting in The Breadwinner. It’s nice to see that a studio outside Japan is sticking with traditional hand-drawn animation, long after American films abandoned it in favor of CGI.

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I love animation that tackles serious subjects, and The Breadwinner is all too timely, reminding us that, even with all the female outcry in America, there is far greater injustice elsewhere in the world. The extremes of Sharia law are depicted with restrained cruelty, giving viewers every reason to care about Parvana and her beleaguered family. Certain moments of light and sympathy shine brighter for the darkness around them.

Despite the compelling narrative, an on-going and seemingly unrelated tale that Parvana tells throughout the film feels more like overly ornate padding than an integral part of the story, and the ending is more open-ended than I would have liked. Yet The Breadwinner is clearly Best Animated Feature material, with beautifully detailed animation, foreign characters that are still easy to empathize with, and a genuinely harrowing climax. I’m tempted to call Cartoon Saloon the Studio Ghibli of Ireland, but I think they’re carving their own praiseworthy niche and doing it quite well.

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Best line: (Parvana) “Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that makes the flowers grow, not thunder.”

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2018 S.G. Liput
550 Followers and Counting

 

Fits and Starts (2017)

06 Friday Apr 2018

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to experiment with line breaks, so I incorporated long and short lines in a poem more about writer’s block than about this movie.)

 

Inspiration grows, composed through joys and woes in verse and prose;
From lows, it rose, and now it flows as dominoes fall unopposed,
But then
It froze.

I’m blank,
I fear,
As tears
Appear.
What if this fog
‘Twixt my ears
Won’t clear
For years,
My writing gears
Caught in arrears.
Goodbye, career
And world premieres!
How can I ever
Persevere?

My knack’s off track; in fact, my lack of active tact deserves a smack.
To lose my muse eschews breakthroughs. What gruesome news!
Oh, wait,
It’s back!
____________________

MPAA rating: Not Rated (should be R)

As this selection from last year’s South by Southwest illustrates, I think comedies that come from film festivals are obligated to be described as quirky. Quirky can range from sweetly unusual to downright bizarre, but Fits and Starts hits a good balance between the two and focuses on themes that any aspiring writer (like me) should relate to with amusement.

The film’s aspiring writer is David Warwik (Wyatt Cenac), a former professor who remains deeply unconfident in his unpublished novel while his wife Jennifer (Greta Lee) rakes in acclaim with her second book release. Despite David’s objections, Jennifer insists they go to her publisher’s salon, a social party of creatives and publishing people, both amateur and professional, yet circumstances force David to go by himself and meet every funny and weird cliché of the artistic elite.

David himself seems odd at first, neurotic and prone to putting his foot in his mouth, yet I could still relate to his desire to just write, without “playing the game,” all the networking and schmoozing that it apparently takes to get published. His jealousy toward Jennifer’s success brought to my mind Chevy Chase in 1988’s Funny Farm, another movie where the writer husband is overshadowed by his wife. Cenac and Lee have surprisingly good chemistry too, able to launch equally defensible accusations at each other while arguing yet also becoming a cute couple when things blow over.

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By the time David gets to the salon and interacts with all the upper-crust crazies, it’s easy to connect with him as the only normal person in the room. I’ll admit I laughed more than I expected to at the insightful caricatures he encounters, like the critic telling him he needs to change his name to something metallic or the creatives discussing ridiculous ideas like they’ve discovered the next great gift to humanity. Some humor also comes from a pair of sarcastic policemen and a multitalented opera singer, but beyond the mere jokes, there’s also worthwhile satire with a point, from the liberal shallowness of the art world to how David can’t get a straight answer from a publisher who clearly didn’t like his novel.

Unfortunately, there’s also some mature content, between the foul language (not as frequent as The Big Sick, though), an obscene drawing, and some nudity, largely from the back or from a distance. I could have done without those, but I still enjoyed Fits and Starts for its satire and its ultimately gratifying depiction of David and Jennifer’s marriage. I especially enjoyed how David’s frustrations eventually boil over into one big renunciation of the absurdities he’s endured at the party, choosing instead to value his wife and his love of literature over the others’ superficiality. As the name might imply, the quirkiness of Fits and Starts doesn’t always hit the mark, but it hit many of the right places for me.

Best line: (guy at party, as David overhears nearby) “You know, I’m thinking of moving to Detroit.”
(girl) “My friend Jeremiah moved to Detroit, and he got shot in the face.”
(guy) “Oh, my god. Jeremiah Boobar?”
(girl) “Yes, two weeks ago, he moved to Detroit and got shot in the face.”
(guy) “Did you go to the funeral?”
(girl) “No. Funeral? He’s alive and kicking. He’s gonna make a documentary about it, you know.”
(guy) “Where did he get the funding?”
(girl) “Indiegogo.”
(guy, after a pause) “I want to get shot in the face.”

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2018 S.G. Liput
550 Followers and Counting

 

Munyurangabo (2007)

05 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

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(Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt was to find a poem in a foreign language, pretend it is about a chosen image, and write our own “translation.” I chose the picture above, a still from this foreign-language film, and tried to base my poem off of the beginning lines of the Xhosa-language poem “The Cattle Killing,” which you can find here. Hopefully, it turned out all right.)

 

Let it stir up,
Let it stir up
Yellowing wakenings of dreams once real—
Friendships’ longevity will fade
Away,
Disappearing with every word
Unspoken or cankered
By lies, downturned eyes, and fears that won’t fade.
I remember us, we two,
Uncankered, unafraid, arm in arm,
Before our brotherhood’s ebbing
When our fears did rise
And our eyes turned down.
As I see you again in my regrets, I wonder,
Would we still be arm in arm
If I had raised my eyes?
___________________________

MPAA rating: Not Rated (little objectionable, but I guess PG-13)

Munyurangabo has sat for so long in my Netflix queue that I can’t even remember where I first heard of it or what I was expecting from it. One thing is certain, though: this is a critic movie, the kind that critics fawn over while regular viewers say things like “It was all right, I guess,” if they even have the patience to finish it at all. It’s not an off-putting disaster like the last critic movie I saw (The Assassin, seriously one of the most grueling films I’ve sat through), but it’s hardly a film I’d watch again, even with some positive elements toward the end.

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While it was filmed in Rwanda as the first movie in the Kinyarwanda language, it was actually directed by American Isaac Lee Chung, who employed local Rwandans as amateur actors. In the film, Munyurangabo (Jeff Rutagengwa), or Ngabo for short, is a teenager traveling with his friend Sangwa (Eric Ndorunkundiye) as they journey to kill someone. On the way, they stop over at the house of Sangwa’s parents, whom he had left to move to the capital of Kigali. While revisiting friends and family, the pair find welcome, resentment, and a reminder that the two of them are each from enemy tribes.

As is common in critic movies, the story of Munyurangabo seems extremely padded to fill out its 97-minute runtime. There are long stretches of the two boys just walking together as the camera follows them from behind. The cinematography is mediocre, to me at least, and the shakiness of the camera adds both intended realism and an amateurish quality. The untrained actors themselves do all right, though there are times their lack of experience shows a bit.

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I had just about decided that this film had very little worthwhile about it when a random stranger (apparently Ugandan poet laureate Edouard Uwayo) suddenly launched into an extended poetry recitation, which might have seemed out of place if it didn’t encapsulate so eloquently the movie’s themes, much better than the rest of the film tries. As an ode to the struggles of the Rwandan nation, it’s a moving one-take scene, practically a psalm, that has little to do with the story and yet everything to do with its larger context. The moral resolution that follows also conveys the value of forgiveness in this war-torn country, even if it doesn’t really address the plight of one of the boys. In short, the last fifteen minutes of Munyurangabo resonate while the rest is dull, so you might be better off just watching the poem scene and leaving the remainder for the critics.

Best line: (part of the poem recitation) “Give the child what he needs, and he can become a king…. The rich one can prepare a gift to give to the poorest one, and how poor is he?”

 

Rank: Honorable Mention

 

© 2018 S.G. Liput
550 Followers and Counting