Aloha

When I first saw Aloha advertised, I thought it had several things going for it:  Cameron Crowe, screenwriter and director; actors Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, and Rachel McAdams; and the gorgeous scenery of Hawaii.

So I put it in my Netflix queue. The film is rated PG-13 for some language including suggestive comments. Though it didn’t do well at the box office, this romantic-comedy-drama is well worth a night at home with popcorn.

I have been a fan of Cameron Crowe since Say Anything, and Jerry McGuire. It is well written, although top heavy on the musical selections. Cameron is into music (see Almost Famous for a semi-autobiographical take on his life on the road with bands), and the almost ever-present music interfered at times with the flow of the movie.

The main characters are Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) and Allison (Emma Stone). (I have enjoyed both their careers since The Hangover and Easy A, the first two films I saw them in.) Brian has a job to do while in Hawaii, and is sweet, vulnerable, and a really great guy. Allison is a total air force military woman with a sharp salute and a mouth that fires at machine gun speed. She is charged with shadowing Brian, ostensibly to keep him out of trouble.

Complicating Brian’s life at this point is an old girlfriend, Tracey Woodside (Rachel McAdams), married to a strong, silent military man. They have two kids, Grace and Mitchell. Will Bradley and Rachel rekindle their love affair, or will he fall for Allison? What will happen with the space launch Brian is charged with completing for eccentric billionaire Carson Welch (Bill Murray)?

I enjoyed the emphasis on Native Hawaiians. We in the continental U.S. may forget that Hawaii was taken by force and coercion, just as it was for the many Native American tribes on the mainland. There is a deep connection to nature that European invaders did not bring with them from their own native peoples when North America and then Hawaii was conquered. The film touches on this connection to nature and spirituality, especially from Allison, who is one-quarter Hawaiian.

Issues no doubt still surface in Hawaii today between natives and the military, and I thought the film did a good job bringing this dynamic into perspective with a fictional, but plausible, story about the military throwing its weight around, along with rich, eccentric space junkie Carson Welch.

The word aloha translates from Hawaiian to “affection, peace, compassion and mercy,” an apt way to describe the characters’ journeys in this story.

The ending is really, really sweet, beautiful and unexpected. There are moments in the film where words are not used to express thoughts and feelings; Cameron allowed the actors to show what they were thinking through subtle expressions and body language, and nowhere is this more evident than in the ending.

I recommend this film. I liked the romance, the focus on the native Hawaiians, and the happy ending. (Next time though, Cameron, go easy with the music, please.)

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

After watching Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter, my husband commented that I shouldn’t post a review, rather to save my reviews for good films that I can recommend viewing. But a reviewer doesn’t have that option. Roger Ebert wrote reviews for bad films. There was that whole thumbs up, thumbs down routine for him and Gene Siskel, so I feel I have a responsibility to post reviews even about films that don’t live up to expectations.

We had this film delivered from Netflix for some Halloween fun, and just got around to seeing it the other night. A film from 2012, it is rated R for violence throughout and brief sexuality. I was not familiar with any of the actors, director or writers (sorry!), although noticed that Tim Burton (The Nightmare Before Christmas and various off beat Johnny Depp films) was one of the producers. Obviously, it is pure fiction; vampires don’t exist, and Lincoln was not a sworn enemy of vampires.

But I appreciated the film for a few reasons. As a screenwriter, I admired how snippets of historical information that were true served as the starting point for fictional situations involving vampires. There seemed to be a comparison in the film with vampires and Confederates. Vampires, if they did exist, are pure evil (unless you’ve watched True Blood, then not so much). And one could say that the Confederates, in favor of slavery, and who used and abused people through slavery, are evil too.

In this story, vampires were paired with the Confederates, even meeting with Jefferson Davis, and of course Lincoln and his aides were with the Union. My husband said that he feared that younger people, given what we’ve heard is a sad state of affairs these days in school with not enough history being taught, might not even know that much about Lincoln and the period of the Civil War, and what it meant to the United States. A good place to begin would be to read A. Lincoln:  A Biography by Ronald C. White, Jr.

There are some action packed sequences, with some kung fu type fighting, and a tension producing train ride, all very well executed on screen. The film held our attention right from the very beginning, and we never once suggested turning it off, which we have done when a movie is so bad we just can’t waste our time.

My favorite quote from the film: “Until every man is free, we are all slaves.” And a clever graphic at the end may remind you of the bloodshed that brought the country together to the 50 states it is today.

I think teenage boys would like this story. And it is said that most Hollywood produced movies are for that teen boys group. Basically, if you like vampires, really well choreographed fight scenes, and spectacular chase scenes, yes to this film. But if you are offended by the thought of Abraham Lincoln being cast as a hunter of vampires, don’t rent it.

Hector and the Search for Happiness

Hector and the Search for Happiness is an interesting and enjoyable film about one man’s journey around the world to find what makes for true happiness. A comedy-drama film from 2014, it is rated R for language and some brief nudity.

Simon Pegg (Hector) is a psychiatrist, and the narrator of the film. Rosamund Pike plays Clara, Hector’s girlfriend. You may remember her from the recent film Gone Girl. (If that is the only film you’ve seen her in, you may be surprised to know that she is British, and nailed that American accent for her role in Gone Girl.)

Hector leads quite a predictably ordered life, and begins to wonder about happiness. Is he or any of his patients truly happy? Will his patients ever find the key to happiness, and can he help them if he is similarly clueless about finding it for himself?

I really empathized with Hector, as I’ve been a counselor and I know how draining it can get listening to other peoples’ problems. In fact, that’s why after several years, I moved into administrative positions for my jobs. You can only hear so much without it beginning to affect you and your own happiness in life.

But, back to Hector. To figure out what is happiness, he treks across the planet, his journey of self-discovery taking him to three continents, and a variety of emotional encounters. Stellan Skarsgard  (Edward) is one of the first strangers Hector meets, with surprising results.

Hector’s musings are shown to us through his drawings and the questions he poses in his journal. I enjoyed this aspect of the film. We are let in on the workings of Hector’s mind through the recording of his thoughts on happiness in his travel journal. He poses a question to people he encounters along the way: What makes you happy? He creates a list about happiness as revealed to him, and I enjoyed thinking about which ones I liked the best.

The film also features Christopher Plummer (Professor Coreman), who studies the effects of happiness on the brain, and enlists Hector to take part in one of his experiments. Toni Collette (Agnes) is one of Hector’s past loves.

Hector finds the humanity in people again, has a series of epiphanies about life, and experiences the growth he would want for his patients in himself. Grateful and in the present, Hector finds happiness in himself.

The film is very entertaining, and I applaud that director and writer took risks by having a narrator, which is looked on as not such a wise decision in order to have a successful movie. They also have Hector’s doodling in his journal come alive on the page and thus on the screen throughout the film. It was creative and effective in bringing this story to life (and contributes to our happiness as movie lovers).

John Lennon said, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” Hector might add that happiness can only happen when you’re truly alive. 

Poltergeist

“They’re here.”

So begins the ordeal of a family in small town USA when their daughter hears ghost/spirits coming out of their TV set.

I am of course talking about the classic Steven Spielberg film Poltergeist. Another of our Halloween selections, this movie from 1982 is truly a horror story. I had somehow never seen it, and found it to be much more scary than it’s PG rating would suggest it to be.

Diane (JoBeth Williams) and Steve (Craig T. Nelson) are the caring parents of three children. Steve is involved in real estate and Diane appears to be a full time mom. They are swept into a maelstrom of supernatural happenings when their daughter disappears.

Steve asks for help from a parapsychology department at a university, and a team visits the home, surprised by the prolific activity of the poltergeists, which translated means “noisy ghosts.” They in turn call in someone to “clean” the house, an interesting little lady, Tangina, played by Zelda Rubinstein; she is like someone’s bizarre grandmother. She gives a beautiful speech in way of explanation about the departed, and what could be happening in the family’s home.

These few scenes with Tangina were the most beautiful part of the story that Steven Spielberg wrote; the screenplay was written with the help of a team. I know something about this paranormal subject, and both my husband and I commented that the movie was confusing ghosts and poltergeists, two different types of spirits. Ghosts more commonly are from those who die and don’t know they’re dead and hang around appearing to the living.

Poltergeists, on the other hand, are frequently associated with teenagers, especially female teenagers, because their energy is so intense. Intense emotions can trigger objects being picked up and hurled, things moving, silverware being bent, etc.

This movie mashed it all up together. It was still a good film, but not entirely true to the field of parapsychology.

There were special features on my DVD entitled They Are Here: The Real World of Poltergeists; Part I Science of the Spirits and Part II Communing with the Dead. We watched both of these which featured interviews with professional ghost hunters and parapsychologists.

If you’d like to read a really good book about real life poltergeists, pick up a copy of Unleashed, of Poltergeists and Murder, the Curious Story of Tina Resch by William Roll, Ph.D. and Valerie Storey.

I’d also say little kids might be pretty scared by this film. It freaked me out, but then I don’t like amorphous monsters that can suck children into other dimensions. They were evil looking. It would make kids say their prayers at night, that’s for sure.

Finally, I wonder about Steven Spielberg and his beliefs in otherworldly phenomena. What has he encountered? Four otherworldly films to his credit may not be just coincidence. If I could invite anyone to dinner for an engrossing night of wine and chitchat, it would be him. “They’re here.”

The Devil's Backbone

I watched another foreign film recently, this one in the horror genre in order to get those Halloween vibes going last weekend. The Devil’s Backbone is a Spanish film by Guillermo del Toro, director of Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). I remember that movie as being quite violent, and hoped this one, which actually preceded Pan’s Labyrinth by five years, would not be as bad in that regard. The film is rated R for violence, language and some sexuality. Pedro Almodovar produced it; those aware of Spanish filmmaking will recognize his name, a prolific filmmaker himself.

Set during the Spanish civil war in 1939, this was a time when children were sent to orphanages to protect them from the ravages of war or when the opposing party killed their parents and they became orphans.

This is a horror film, one promising the specter of ghosts, secrets to be revealed, and for the boys in the orphanage, their courage to be tested. Early on in the film it is established that the Spaniards are a superstitious people, and the devil’s backbone explained (and shown in graphic detail!).

Carlos (Fernando Tielve), a 12 year old whose father has been killed, is dropped off at an isolated boys’ orphanage by a man he refers to as his tutor, who subsequently leaves him without saying goodbye. Carlos is despondent, but quickly tries to fit in with the other boys, all orphaned and abandoned children who are taken care of by headmistress Carmen (Marisa Paredes) and Dr. Casares (Federico Luppi). Carmen is a tough woman with the boys, but has a soft side, as seen in her fondness for the poetry Dr. Casares recites from memory.

Carlos apparently has “the gift,” because he sees the ghost of Santi, a young boy who has been missing for some time. Santi wants Carlos to know something and pursues him when darkness falls, much to Carlos’ horror.

Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega), a man who was an orphan and lived at the orphanage when he was young, has returned and now works there. He has many secrets, some of which he has in common with Carmen, their complicated relationship hidden from Jacinto’s girlfriend and the boys.

The boys hunt for slugs in a cellar where a well draws the creatures in, and the cellar ultimately holds the key to Santi’s disappearance. I found the bleak landscape, and the defused bomb sitting in the courtyard ominous and foreboding, and the ghost of Santi held me spellbound.

The film was less violent than Pan’s Labyrinth I thought, although if you are sensitive to violence, it could disturb you. Even though the ghost of the film is supernatural, the plotline and the events that transpire felt real, as if they could have happened in a country torn by war, where death was everywhere, and innocents had to grow up quickly.

If you’re looking for an adult movie, something creepy and with a good storyline, The Devil’s Backbone may be just the one for you.