Takeaways: 13th

 

This was, by far, the hardest watch yet.  I Am Not Your Negro was a fluffy hug by comparison.  While not necessarily designed to shock or appall, the information and media used in this film is both shocking and appalling, and I was HURTING by the end of it.  So, for those squeamish, fair warning. 

Like a lot of average Amerian kids, I grew up with the white-washed version of history:
Slavery happened, back in the dark ages,
segregation was terrible,
the civil rights movement fixed it,
thank god- lets move on.

I didn't experience a massive amount of white guilt in learning this Disney-version of history because that's exactly what it's designed to do: help white people forget the horrors of the ancestry of this country.  Regardless of whether or not there are slave owners on your family tree we all live here and unfortunately the sins of the fathers are passed down to ALL of us.

The ACTUAL history of slavery in America, I have now learned, is this:
Slavery happened, in an America so much more similar to the one we currently live in than anyone would like to admit,
and never... actually went away.
It changed form, and now the systems that support it are so deeply ingrained in society that the only way to actually fix it is to rebuild... pretty much everything.

WHAT!?!  Pretty fucking horrifying.  John Oliver related it to the shock many experienced when learning about the Tulsa massacre from watching Watchmen.  I've heard the expression "waking up white"- I think that's what this feeling is.

To learn that the absolute worst period of American history is not in any way, shape, or form actually history caused me actual physical pain.  I was at times nauseous, tearful, clenching, fidgeting, and ultimately drained by the end of it.  And that's an appropriate response, I think, to discovering just how truly horrific the state of this country actually is.

So, here's what I learned:  As soon as slavery 'ended', white supremacists (who did not stay in the south) extorted a loophole in the constitution- the 13th amendment (thus the title of the film) which states:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." 

This enabled the re-enslavement of black humans by the thousands under the guise of protecting communities from "criminals" after blacks were arrested (often for nothing at all) and used as free labor through convict leasing. In order to prevent the majority from becoming sympathetic to the plight of these "criminals", the media created the false narrative that black men were dangerous, violent, and actively looking for ways to harm the whites they resented for their past treatment and thus the black man = criminal myth was born.

The word criminal comes up in this film so much that I actually started to get a bit sick of it.  But I recognize what they're trying to do: point out how deeply ingrained this idea is within the entirety of the American psyche.  Countless psychological studies have proven that the average white person, regardless of their actual beliefs about race, will label a black man as suspicious when shown a series of neutral photographs of different races.  And there's an automatic, unspoken assumption that is deep within the mind of everyone who lives in this country- regardless of whether or not we recognize it.

This brainwashing is so destructive not only to people like me who grew up unaware of the racism I was trained to believe, but to the black identity in and of itself.  As one of the scholars pointed out: "So you have educated a public deliberately, over years, over decades, to believe that black men in particular, and black people in general, are criminals.  I want to be clear because I'm not just saying that white people believe this, right?  Black people also believe this and are terrified of our own selves."

Fuuuuucck,  Anyway, back to history: media continued to influence the American psyche and got a particularly big boost in 1915 with the release of "The Birth of a Nation" which depicted black men as, you guessed it, criminals and rapists and white supremacists- the KKK specifically- as heroic forces preserving the value of the American way of life.  (Horrifying fact: this was the first film in history ever to be screened at the White House.)  As a result of the popularity of this movie, people flocked to join their local chapter of the KKK and lynching became a fun evening activity for a lot of people who believed they were simply helping to keep their communities safe.

When this murderous form of racism became unpalatable to the average American, segregation was created as a solution to the problem.  I think most of us got some education on the horrors of segregation and Jim Crow laws but were also taught that the civil rights movement ultimately solved all the problems of this time.  Fun fact:  it didn't.  The 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1968 Fair Housing Act were supposed to end segregation, pay inequality, and discrimination by businesses and public facilities.   Housing is still very much segregated as are schools (no longer by force but by economic inequality).  The pay gap between white and black Americans is larger now than it was in the 60s when the civil rights movement was in full swing.  And discrimination by businesses is still rampant in this country and has been emboldened by the current sitting president and other outspoken white supremacists.

The Voting Rights Act was supposed to end gerrymandering  (it didn't), voter discrimination (it didn't), and voter suppression in general ultimately failed to end any of those practices that still very much take place today.  And thanks to the fact that any individual convicted of a federal crime is ineligible to vote the whole black man = criminal myth pretty much all but guarantees that voter suppression remains intact.  Which brings us back to crime.

The film then goes on to explain how being "tough on crime" became one of the core requirements for anyone, regardless of political party, to get elected.  They site specific laws advocated for and enacted by Nixon, Reagan, George Bush Sr., and Clinton and give the statistics on the number of jailed individuals going up by 200k increments, then a 500k increment, and finally a 1 million increase each decade since 1970.   And 40% of those now more than 2.2 million prisoners are black.  (That's in 4 black people in the country.)

With so many people in prison, and so many billions of dollars going into the creation of prisons, this birthed the prison industrial complex.  To learn that this complex is not only a multi billion dollar industry but that there are several legal systems in place which support it was disturbing on a level I was previously blind to.  And the fact that 97% of prisoners were sentenced by plea bargain rather than by trial ensures that this will continue.  Not to mention the legacy of police racially profiling and outright murdering black people.  We are living in the age of mass imprisonment.  The way that things were after the civil war when people were arrested, quite literally just for being black, and then imprisoned by a system designed to keep them in jail, and used as free labor while there- well, that's exactly the way things are now.

That's the primary point of this movie- slavery never really ended in the United States.  It simply changed forms.  It was always an economic institution first, driven by racism and white supremacy, and it still is.  And given the amount of profit the current system makes, it has become that much more difficult to try to dismantle this multi systemic machine.  Which means that it will take that many more of us fighting it for things to change.

The ACLU, Vera Institute of Justice, Brennan Center for Justice, Critical Resistance, and many, many other organizations have been working hard to make changes on all levels and to empower individuals to fight the systems within their local communities as well.  I as one person may not be able to do much, but there is strength in numbers and if enough of us educate ourselves to the way things really are (and this film is a good way to start that process) and start actually doing something about it, it will have to change.  It has to.

Takeaways: I Am Not Your Negro

*From time to time I'll be talking about media I'm consuming in pursuit of knowledge, growth, or help understanding some of these difficult concepts.  These are not movie/tv show/podcast reviews as I'm not discussing how well made they are, rather what I learned from watching them.

I hate to admit that I'd never heard of James Baldwin before this film.  Now that I have I've got several books to add to my reading list as I've heard from multiple sources that he was an amazing writer and had a lot of incredibly powerful spiritual messages.  In my brief exposure to his words in this movie I was struck by how poetically he described heartbreak in the moments of learning of his friend's deaths.  (His friends being Medgar Evers, Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.)

I don't know if I've ever heard it explained before- of what it feels like to grow up black in a white world, and how strange of a revelation it is to learn that you are black and that this world you live in is not your world.  This one quote sums it up perfectly: "It comes as a great shock around the age of five, or six, or seven, to discover that when Gary Cooper was killing off the indians, while you were rooting for Gary Cooper, that the indians were you.  It comes as a great shock to discover the country which is your birth place, and to which you owe your life and your identity, has not in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you."

One of the things that has been recommended by activists, to help white people learn a tiny bit of what it feels like to be black, is to watch only black media and see what that feels like.  I've only dipped my toes into the pool so far with things like Dear White People and Never Have I Ever but even with that tiny amount of exposure I'm already struck by a barrier.  I can admire these characters, and love them, and even empathize with their emotions- but I can never emulate them. 

We white people grow up watching all these role models (for better or worse) and thinking that we can grow up to be them.  To grow up in a world where there are no heroes who look like you, share your history, see the world from inside the same skin- how demoralizing that must be.  And don't get me wrong- I'm not saying I had a lot of great role models.  I see more and more how much of the media I was exposed to growing up portrayed only negative female stereotypes.  But at least there were females I related to.  White females.  I could turn on the tv and see myself in the individuals whose stories I connected with.

Looking at the drive of capitalism and the worship of consumerism as the things that enable people to maintain their ignorance is also pretty profound: "For a very long time, America prospered.  This prosperity cost millions of people their lives.  Now, not even the people who are the most spectacular recipients of the benefits of this prosperity are able to endure these benefits.  They can neither understand them nor do without them.  Above all, they cannot imagine the price paid by their victims, or subjects for this way of life, and so they cannot afford to know why the victims are revolting."

How could I have known that the nice, safe suburban neighborhood I grew up in was built on the literal corpses of an entire race of people?  Especially when I was not taught (and lord knows I wasn't) that not only was this the case, but that this was the way the world worked?  I grew up believing that people survived and thrived based on their own merits (one of the core American myths still being widely perpetuated today). 

The core message that is presented here, and my primary takeaway is this: there is no such thing as a negro.  Much like the fabled black sheep, the black people of this world have inherited the sins of those who cannot and will not look at themselves.  "I have always been struck, in America, by an emotional poverty so bottomless, and a terror of human life- of human touch, so deep that virtually no American seems able to achieve any viable, organic connection between his public stance and his private life.  This failure of the private life has always had the most devastating effect on Americans' public conduct, and on black-white relations.  If Americans were not so terrified of their private selves, they would never have become so dependent on what they call "the negro problem".  This problem which they invented in order to safeguard their purity has made them criminals and monsters, and it is destroying them."

That's the first time that that concept- of black humans as black sheep- has ever been explained to me with such clarity before.  It makes so much goddamned sense.

In the end, I'm left with the final words of the film as a call to action.  Of deep, personal reflection, as to the why- the driving force behind our need to defame, dehumanize, disenfranchise, and destruct:

"It is entirely up the the American people and our representatives whether or not they are going to accept and deal with and embrace the stranger they have maligned so long.  What white people have to do is try to find out, in their own hearts, why it is necessary to have a N* {we all know what racial epithet that's short for.  I'm not writing it out.} in the first place.  Because I am not a N*.  I'm a man.  But if you think I'm a N*, it means you need him.  The question the white population of this country has got to ask itself, if I'm not the N* here, and if you invented him, then you've got to find out why."

I'm trying James Baldwin.  Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Two Movie Reviews

Without planning to, I ended up watching a couple of films this weekend which I loved so much that I just have to say a few words about each of them.  It was a completely unexpected coincidence that they both happened to deal with the subject of grief, which is why I deemed it appropriate to include them in the same entry.

Fist up, a new story by my absolute favorite filmmaker of all time: Zach Braff.

I first encountered the genius that is Zach Braff in 2004 when I saw what became my favorite film of all time: Garden State.  That movie effected me more than anything else I've seen.  And while I can't say that this film replaced it in the pantheon of film gods I will definitely say I'll be housing it in the same temple in my heart.

Braff's familiar style is all over this movie: the characters desperately trying to make their way through life's seemingly meaningless pain, the strikingly honest dialogue, the visually stunning vistas as characters look out on their world and, of course, the award-winning soundtrack.

And it deals with similar subject matter: the concepts of family, identity and grief.  Here the main character is an almost middle-aged man struggling with a career that didn't pan out, a wife struggling to keep the family together and a father whose cancer has returned with a death knell.  Braff portrays a lot of the same issues with this character as he did with Garden State: a conflicted and rich relationship with his father,  a pure and authentic love for his significant other and uncertainty about who he is supposed to be.  Here he has the added roles of brother and father and he pulls off both wonderfully.  The primary difference here is that while Andrew Largeman was trying to find home Aidan Bloom is trying to hold his together.

The trailers I've seen have all sold this movie as a journey of self discovery but what it really focuses on is grief- Aidan's father is dying and regardless of what else is going on here that is the primary story.  It plays into his career (after all, a father is supposed to provide for his family) and his relationship with his children (wanting to do for them what his father failed to do for him while still building their grandfather's legacy and teaching them about his life) and certainly who he is as a man who was raised by this person- but all of that is related to the fast-approaching loss.

Mandy Patinkin is, as always, incredible as the ailing patriarch and brings oceans of depth to this father struggling to make amends with his sons before dying.  Kate Hudson is the best that I've ever seen her in any film and portrays the mother of this family with disarming honesty.  (I also think that character was written brilliantly and Braff did a fantastic job of portraying the pushes and pulls that matriarchs struggle with).

But the most fantastic performance by far was one that I didn't expect: Josh Gad portrays Noah, Aidan's younger brother who has failed to really launch and lives an isolated life after the death of their mother whom he was more close to anyone else.  Noah and his father have been estranged for over a year due to his father's criticism of him and he fights Aidan's requests to go visit him because of this.  There's a pivotal scene near the end when Aidan's daughter begs Noah to go see her grandfather and he almost magically transforms into a frightened child before our eyes.  There are few moments in movie history that so clearly capture the fear and helplessness one faces when confronted with death and he did it breathtakingly.

In the end, I deeply adored this movie.  It'll be a favorite of mine held in the highest regard for many years to come.

Next up: Wild.

This movie comes from a book of the same title (which of course I have to read now) by a woman named Cheryl Strayed who overcame life-altering grief by hiking 1,100 miles on the Pacific Crest trail.  (Since I haven't read the book yet keep in mind that this review is exclusively about the movie.)

This movie was extremely similar in style to another movie I loved modeled after another fantastic book: Into the Wild.  They deal with similar subject matter- both portraying individuals surviving in the wilderness alone with little to no training after suffering from various traumas.  The primary difference is that while the protagonist of Into the Wild dies due to his inexperience Cheryl Strayed lives to tell her tale and subsequently it is one of triumph rather than tragedy.

I don't mean to make it sound that similar- Strayed was on a relatively well-traveled path with frequent meet-ups with civilization where she received a great deal of assistance while McCandless went out into the uncharted wilderness alone with express intent of never meeting up with anyone.  (I.E. there are very obvious reasons why Strayed lived and McCandless died.)  But story-telling wise they're very similar- the current story is interspersed with flashbacks of the past explaining why the characters are on the journey they're on.

I went into this movie thinking that the main character was trying to recover from a failed marriage and struggling to reinvent herself after that.  In actuality, while her marriage did in fact fail that was a result of her grief after her mother, whom she titled 'the love of my life', died suddenly from cancer.  Her loss was so overwhelming that she lost herself in both heroin and sexual addiction as a result of it and didn't emerge until several years and a divorce later at which time she concluded that in order to heal she needed to get some time away from her life to make sense of it all.  Why did she take that time on the Pacific Crest Trail?  Because her mother had taught her that one needs to put themselves "in the way of beauty" and she couldn't think of a better place to find that.

This movie struck several chords with me.  On a superficial level, I enjoyed some of the difficulties of backpacking portrayed- I too have walked with a 70 pound pack on my back, eaten "cold mush" for multiple meals due to a stove not working properly, been pained by bruised hips and slept in tents in less-than-ideal conditions.  While she did it alone for 1,100 miles I did it with a group for less than 30.  But still, familiar.

On a deeper level, I responded to the idea that when faced with inescapably quiet moments one will face down some of the darkest moments of memory and come out (due to a lot of willpower) stronger because of it.  And that's really what this movie is about- it isn't the hike itself that serves to force her to face her past, it's her isolation.  Her alone on the trail with nothing but her own thoughts to occupy her.  And while her personal struggles to overcome the extreme hardships of the epic hike certainly shape her what really heals her is willingness to come face to face with her darkness and forgive herself for it.   This movie does a fantastic job of portraying that.

Or course Reese Witherspoon did a fantastic portrayal of Cheryl and I'm gonna go ahead and call her nomination for best actress as a given.  Laura Dern gave the best performance of the film as her mother, though.  Though she's only in a few frames she pumps so much life into Cheryl's mother that it's easy to see why the loss of that woman could destroy a person.  I know Jean-Marc Vallée from Dallas Buyers Club but I must say I appreciate him a thousand times more here because the film plays the way one imagines the true experience would with Cheryl's memories coming on in flashes, sometimes overwhelmingly intense, but always without purposeful recollection.  It feels really organic in that way.

The other folks she meets on the trail, the breathtaking landscapes she encounters and the full breaths she takes of what is clearly renewing air round out the cast here and all of them hold full weight whenever they're on screen.  It was a masterfully done piece on the whole.

I plan to read the book at some point before the year passes because one imagines that if the movie is this good the source must be that much more powerful.  (Plus a friend of mine said she read it and loved it and I totally trust her judgement.)  So I'm gonna go ahead and recommend both.

Movie Review: The Muppets Most Wanted

Quick note: This movie doesn't take itself seriously enough to worry about spoilers but if you're really anal about that stuff skip this till you've seen it.  If not, read on!

Let me just take a moment and say how incredibly happy I am that they are making Muppet movies again.  2011's The Muppets was the first Muppet movie in 12 years and the experience of seeing my favorite childhood friends back on the big screen after such an incredibly long absence was just overwhelming.  Seriously, I cried like a baby throughout that movie because I was so happy to see them again!  Well, that and it was really sad at points.

The aforementioned is why I found this film so refreshing.  Not only does it prove that the franchise has been successfully revitalized (as their opening number "We're doing a sequel" celebrates) but it's also about a thousand times more lighthearted than it's 2011 predecessor.

They throw around ideas for what movie they should make in the beginning, poking fun at the plots they've already used in past films (and verifying that this 'sequel' is technically the 7th sequel since the original Muppet Movie).  One of the main bad guys of the film has the last name "Badguy".  When Kermit gets arrested they throw him into a police vehicle labeled "plotpoint".  When Tina Fey bids goodnight to the prisoners Waltons-style she calls Danny Trejo by name, just to point out how stuffed-to-the-gills with cameos the movie is.

More famous celebrities than you can shake a stick at!

But regardless of all this star power, we all know who we're really there to see and this movie features them more than the 2011 film did by giving them the bulk of the dialogue, action and singing tasks.  (It's not uncommon to find a scene with no human participants and I personally found that refreshing.)

The real stars

Which isn't to say that the actors don't do a bang-up job.  Ricky Gervais is fantastic as the under appreciated sidekick to Kermit's look-alike Constantine (A.K.A. "The most dangerous frog in the world") and holds his own despite a scene-stealing frog.

And Ty Burrell rocks as the Interpol agent trying to catch the criminal masterminds.  (It helps that he spends the bulk of the movie channeling Inspector Jacques Clouseau.)

But my personal favorite was definitely Tina Fey as the hard-nosed jail warden keeping Kermit locked up in Siberian purgatory.  Her performance of "The Big House" was delightful and her deft maneuvering of Kermit's many escape attempts will make every fan of prison break-out movies ecstatic.

“I have Netflix account with search key words ‘prison escape', I have seen every prison movie ever made, even the ones in space.”

Overall I'd have to say my only disappointment was the use of Kermit and Miss Piggy's wedding as a plot device.  I know that when you're raving about how overwhelmingly silly a movie is you can't really stand firm in your criticisms of that same movie's ignorance of the characters' previous canon- but I can't help it.  Their wedding in The Muppets Take Manhattan (which is still my favorite Muppet movie of them all) was one of the most romantic moments of my childhood and I just can't abide this film's refusal to acknowledge that it ever happened.  Though even I have to admit that Miss Piggy looks a ton more impressive in Vivienne Westwood than she did in that super-poofy 80's wedding dress.

    Vs.   

Still, nothing will ever replace the moment Kermit finally sang his petrified "I do" back in 1984.

The most romantic moment of little Bev's young life

But I digress.  The almost-wedding doesn't distract from what is overall a kick-ass movie full of all the laughs, gags, singing, dancing and heart that one expects from the Muppets.  If you're a fan (and I assume you are, why else would you be reading this?) you will love this new addition to the long line of fantastic Muppet exploits.  And if you're a parent who grew up with these guys and want to introduce them to your little ones this isn't a bad start.  And heck, if you just like being happy, this is also a great choice for that.

I guess my point is that I love the Muppets.  Always have, always will.

Celebrate the Small Things for December 13

Happy Friday, all!  Be sure to check out our hostess Viklit for the full list of celebrators!

My celebrations this week:

It's Official  I got my official offer letter, signed about a billion different forms for HR, scheduled trainings and put in my letter of resignation at my current job.  My co-workers are sad but happy for me and I think it worked out really nicely that I'll be able to celebrate the holidays with them, finish the year and then move on.  I will always be grateful for my time here- it's the best group of co-workers I've ever had and I'm going to enjoy my remaining time with them as much as humanly possible.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas  Monday night I put on The Muppet Christmas Carol (which is, in case you didn't know, the best version of The Christmas Carol that was ever made), pulled out boxes from the basement and decorated the house.  My tree is brightening up the living room, I've got a wreath on my front door and the stockings are, in fact, hung by the chimney with care.  I've also got Christmas lights and garland up on my office walls at work and I've been listening to Christmas music on Pandora while writing up all my notes.  I think I needed to have everything settled with the job before really getting into the swing of things but I'm happy to be merry and festive now.

Snow!  Here in PA we got hit by two consecutive snowstorms followed by highs in the 20s for several days so the snow is sticking around and making me very happy when all those snow-themed Christmas songs play on the radio.  Last year we had no snow to speak of and for a person who loves snow that’s a sad state of affairs.  Granted, by the time we get hit with the next major storm they’re predicting I may be getting irked by sore shoulders while clearing off my car and shoveling- but for now I’m happy to see the winter wonderland everywhere I look.

Thank god for Amazon  Christmas shopping = done!  I don’t know why anyone goes to the mall.  Seriously.

And now, as always, hop along and spread the love!

---

1. Suzanne Furness The Word is. . .	2. Julie Flanders	3. tara tyler
4. Lara Lacombe - Romance With an Edge	5. Life, yoga and other adventures	6. Ink in the Book
7. My Baffling Brain	8. Tyreans Writing Spot	9. Writing Off the Edge
10. Lexa Cain	11. Michelle @ Writer~In~Transit	12. The Write Game
13. Writers Mark	14. Entertaining Interests	15. Reading, Writing and Everything in Between
16. Effectively Human	17. Mary Pax	18. Diana Wilder - About myself, by myself. . .
19. Pasha, From Animal Shelter to A Sheltered Life	20. S. K. Anthony	21. Agenthood and Submissionville
22. Defending The Pen	23. Queendsheena	24. Bouquet of Books
25. Kidbits	26. Black Coffee and Cigarettes	27. melanie schulz
28. Shah Wharton's WordsinSync	29. Intentional Insights by S. Kelley Harrell	30. Simply Sarah
31. M. J. Fifield	32. Constantine	33. Nana Prah's Blog
34. Thoughts and Ideas from Deanie Humphrys-Dunne	35. Shayla's TeaGarden	36. The Beveled Edge
37. Meredith's Musings	38. Sarah J. Clift	39. Fiction and Film
40. Scribbling In The Storage Room	41. Mere Joyce	42. Patricia's Place
43. In Between	44. A Place on the Bookshelf	45. Bames Live
46. Life Happens	47. Michie	48. Rhonda @ Laugh-Quotes
49. Shells, Tales and Sails	50. dreaming of publication	51. My path to self publishing multicultural novels
52. Lowfell writers place	53. My Little Avalon	54. Ashley Nixon YA F, S; A LF
55. Writeful Melodies	56. Reviews From A Bookworm	57. Finding Time
58. OnBecomingAWriter	59. Viklit	60. The Narrator's Study
61. Author M. J. Flournoy's blog	62. Feather's Passion	63. The Enchantress @ chinkysinghal. blogspot. co
64. Mei - Thankful for my furry friends!	65. Sandra Cox	66. Lisa Casian
67. Creating Wordlenik	68. Words World and Wings	69. Celebrating PMS

Movie Review: Despicable Me 2

 To continue on with my weekend of movie reviews I give you: Despicable Me 2.

 I am a fan of cute movies.  Well, that's not entirely accurate.  I am, let's say, obsessed with cute movies.  Yeah, that's more like it.  As a general rule the Pixar movies are my favorites but every now and again Dreamworks or Universal will come out with some serious contenders.  And that's what they did in 2010 when they unveiled Despicable Me- a movie so cute it permanently stole my heart away.

If you haven't seen Despicable Me I'm going to have to request that you go watch it.  Now.  Seriously- stop reading this, hop on Netflix or wherever you get your movies from and go watch it.  I'll wait.

We all on the same page now?  Cutest damned movie in the history of cute movies, right?  Even cuter than WALL-E which I didn't think anything could be.  But it is.

It isn't just the minions though they are, by far, the biggest selling point of this franchise.  It's the love story between a hardened master criminal and a trio of orphaned girls.  All seeking the acceptance and love that they've been denied and finding it within each other.  And it helps that Agnes is the cutest little girl ever.  (Though Boo is a close second.)

At any rate, my point in going on and on about the first movie is simply to say that everything that is good about the 2nd movie is what is good about the first.  The minions are still the big draw and their assorted misadventures dominate the funny moments.  When they start getting abducted a little ways in the stakes for our favorite yellow GMOs get raised even higher and an ending where Gru has to rescue them from the new master criminal is the most exciting thing going on here.  They were, are and will remain the heart of these movies.

The other main source of my love for Despicable Me is, as I said, the relationships between Gru and his daughters.  And that's still the best love story in this movie.  Now a semi-regular dad Gru is doing his best to keep his girls happy and whether that means dressing up as a fairy princess for Agnes (who is still the cutest), dodging Edith's sword while she's playing ninja or trying not to kill Margo's new crush he's going to do it.  The love that this man shares with his three daughters is still what pulls on your heartstrings here, though it's not the focus.

No, the focus is his new crush: secret agent in training Lucy Wilde (voiced by the impeccable Kristen Wiig) who recruits him to help solve the mystery of a missing top secret research laboratory.  It's no surprise that the bumbling, insecure and terribly self-critical Gru was not a hit with the ladies whilst growing up and that the pressure his daughters give him to start dating is met with anxiety and dismissal.

But Lucy is not like other girls and she's pretty bumbling herself so when a spark starts between these two the ending is written well before the story really begins.  I have to say this love story fell a little flat for me in comparison, but when was a sequel ever as good the first movie?  Lucy is still great for laughs and Agnes' poem to her at the end is the biggest "Awwww" of the film.  (And the minion rendition of All 4 One's "I Swear" is sheer brilliance.)

Before I end I must mention the villain: El Macho.  He's tough, he's smart and he's stolen away Gru's greatest assets without him even realizing it.  And, as if all that weren't enough, he's got a killer guard chicken.  He's a formidable foe and deserves all the screen time he gets.  Plus, any fan of Mexican wrestling has gotta love the costume!

In the end, Despicable Me 2 is a great follow up in the franchise filled with all the humor, heart warming moments and adorableness that made the first one so great.  As many things as there were about it that didn't work as well as in the first one I can't really take issue with any of them because at the end of the day it's another movie.  Sort of like a second bowl of ice cream can't possibly be a bad thing even if it's not as amazing as the first.  Which is why it goes without saying that when the minion movie comes out next year I will be eagerly awaiting its arrival.

Movie Review: Man of Steel

As always, I must warn of spoilers galore in this review.  So although I think it likely that I'm one of the very few left who haven't seen this movie, I must warn that if you fall into that category you skip this.  However, if you're one of the many, MANY who saw this weeks ago when it came out and are interested in my take, read on.

I was a pretty huge fan of the original Superman starring the unbeatable Christopher Reeve (whose brilliant career was cut way too short).  He was, is and will always be Superman to me and I don't think anyone can ever replace him.  Thankfully, the creators of this film didn't try to.

Yes, it is still an origin story but it's a completely different one.  Kal-El is still sent off from Krypton, but under rather different circumstances than we've seen before.  Here, rather than the imminent destruction of the planet sparking his emergency exit, it is a coup staged by General Zod that leads his parents to high-tail him off the planet.  Shortly after his escape, Zod is sent off to the Phantom realm as we originally saw in the 2nd Superman film.  Krypton does eventually implode, at which point Zod sets off to find Kal-el.

Meanwhile, back on earth, we are exposed to a rather different image of Clark Kent then we've previously seen before.  Here, rather than the geeky reporter of the Daily Planet we have a scruffy vagabond drifting from place to place like a lost soul.  Of course he can't keep himself from rescuing people, but he's clearly doing it out of moral obligation rather than out of his role as a hero, cause he's not playing that role yet.  Plus he always ends up leaving shortly after to keep his super strength and indestructibility a secret.  It is a lonely, rather bleak look at the hero we haven't seen before.

Juxtaposed with this are flashbacks from his childhood in which we see the shaping of this young man by his truly noble parents.  I'm not normally a big Kevin Costner fan but I have to say that he totally worked as Jonathan Kent.  He beautifully portrayed the struggle of a man trying to raise a son clearly destined for greater things whilst still protecting him from the planet he fears would attack him for the same reasons.  And Diane Lane plays Martha just as sweet, gentle but ultimately strong as we've ever seen her.  And I must give mad props to all the kids who played the growing hero- each one was able to depict pretty raw emotions in a variety of really demanding scenes and I wouldn't put it past any one of them to grow into serious actors in the future.

These flashbacks don't just take place in the beginning of the movie as they showed in the original, they pop up throughout the story.  Each one depicts a particular lesson, struggle or defining moment in young Clark's life and each one is shown in conjunction with something he's facing in real time as the story progresses.  I have to say I wasn't really feeling this mode of storytelling in the beginning of the film since I felt like i was missing something.  But as each one unfolded I found myself appreciating it more and more and by the end it proved one of the most interesting and well-done elements of this movie.

Perhaps it's because I'm sentimental, perhaps it's because I'm just way into canon but I found these flashbacks and the quiet moments between Superman and Lois, or his father (who, again, I have to say was masterfully played by Russell Crowe) or Zod to be the most memorable.  It's those that made this film for me.  All the special effects and epic battle sequences were, by comparison, almost tedious.

But, to be fair, it is Superman.  If something's not blowing up, or a city's not in life-threatening danger then how would we know what we're watching?  Sigh.

Not that the special effects aren't good.  The sequence where he first learns to fly made me so happy I almost teared up (mainly because flying, to me, seems like the greatest thrill a person could ever experience.  Seriously- every time I get a quiz asking which superhero I'd be I say Superman for this reason.  And of course if I could have any superpower it'd be flying.  But I digress.  It was gorgeous, is my point.)  And Krypton has never looked so good.

But when they're destroying Kansas or Metropolis it gets a bit tedious and starts to blend in with a sea of other action movies that end up destroying several city blocks.  (I tell ya, those Hollywood types just can't destroy enough cities!  Sheesh!)  It's here that I have to echo others' complaints of the fight scenes just going on way too long.  They could have cut a good 15 minutes of that out and we wouldn't have been any worse off.

But to be fair, what makes a good fight scene is the people fighting it.  One pits superman against Ursa and a faceless Zod underling- both of whom are painfully flat throughout.  The other pits Superman against Zod himself and that, thankfully, was worth watching.

It's here that I have to take a moment and apologize because I'm about to go a little fan girl on you all.  Eh-hem.  HOW EFFING AWESOME IS MICHAEL SHANNON?!?  Any of you who have seen Boardwalk Empire (which I love so, so much) know what I'm talking about- the man is sheer brilliance!  He does zealots better than any human being that has ever acted.  The singlemindedness, the restraint, the rage boiling under the surface that explodes in unimaginably brutal violence- he's just brilliant at that.  And this Zod taps into every one of those characteristics.  I know I'm biased but I have to say that, in my opion, he stole the whole damned movie.

Ok, rant over.  A couple more points before I end this: the music was great.  Nowhere near the epic score from the original which is as distinguished as the sound of Jaws, Star Wars or Harry Potter, but still great.  Henry Cavill was wonderful and did the role of Superman proud.  Amy Adams was a wonderful Lois Lane- full of spunk but also gentleness but seeing her in this role makes me long to see her in something totally different for a change, you know?  It's a just a little too familiar.  I heard a rumor that they're going to finally make a biopic of Janis Joplin (something they've been trying to do for years) and that she's slated for the role.  I would LOVE to see that.  Cause her sweet yet spunky act has been a little played out.

All in all, I kind-of loved it.  And assuming they do make a second installment in this franchise (which I suspect they will) I will happily go see it.  But they better get a damned good villain to make up for the loss of Zod. 

I know, I felt the same way.